Fears of ‘wider’ cyberattack as ‘critical flaw’ forces thousands of websites to shut down

There are now fears that even more websites could be at risk due to a ‘critical flaw’ in cybersecurity that has already seen millions of attempted cyberattacks.

Major websites across the world, including Wikipedia and Amazon, were forced to take down some of their sites after they detected hackers trying to exploit an exposure in the PHP programming language. 

This has sparked major concerns about further possible cyberattacks, as PHP is used by almost 70% of websites across the globe. 

Experts have stressed that there may be vulnerabilities lying in the software that would allow attackers to remotely control any web servers using PHP. 

This quickly prompted the UK to launch a probe into the issue as a number of local council websites went down amid the attack, along with certain BBC web servers. 

However, cyberattackers are already aware of the issue, with millions of attempted hacks being reported across the globe, according to the BBC.

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Meanwhile, governments across the globe are also holding emergency meetings as they scramble to understand how the issue can be resolved.

Following the recent incident, the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre issued a warning saying: "Where immediate remediation is not feasible, organisations should consider taking the system offline until it can be fully mitigated."

Similarly, one of the world’s largest intelligence agencies, the US National Security Agency (NSA), urged affected organisations to take their systems offline immediately. 

The cybersecurity flaw was first discovered in August by researcher Ryan Austin, who was using an advanced OpenAI model to comb the programming. 

He has described the flaw as the "most serious vulnerability" he has ever seen. OpenAI has also described it as "one of the most impactful security issues in recent memory.'

Speaking on the issue, Alp Tiker, cybersecurity expert and director at NetBlocks, explained to Sky News that the PHP flaw is "highly impactful" and disruptions have the possibility to become "more widespread."

Meanwhile, Alan Woodward, professor at the Surrey Centre for Cyber Security, warned that abusing the flaw, attackers can "basically do whatever they like."

He said: "It’s serious because of the scale of it and also the nature of it. We’re talking something like 30 million websites out there – we’re certainly getting off of that number – but also the nature of it."

However, he did note that the flaw has likely been exposed earlier than planned, claiming the lapse likely meant hackers were simply checking for vulnerabilities.

*This article was originally published on Extra.ie.