Global companies and governments are racing to patch a critical\nvulnerability in PHP, the programming language underpinning much of the\ninternet. The emergency response followed reports from cloud service\nproviders of a sharp rise in hacking attempts shortly after the\nvulnerability was made public.<\/p>\n
The rapid action came after several governments in Europe and\nelsewhere chose to take official websites offline as a precaution.\nWebsite operators are also working urgently to secure systems running\nthe affected software.<\/p>\n
Sudden shutdowns of banking, airline, railway, tax and public\nservices from Tokyo to Helsinki have become one of the most serious\ntests for this decades-old programming foundation. The incident has also\nexposed the extent to which governments and global business giants\ndepend on digital code understood by only a small number of people.<\/p>\n
\u201cI haven\u2019t seen an event like this in a very, very long time,\u201d\nMicrosoft chief executive Satya Nadella said at an event in Germany,\nReuters reported on Monday (26 October 2026). He said the incident was a\nstark reminder of the need to build software that can be maintained\nsecurely as systems become increasingly complex.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis has been a very long day and night for all the IT and cyber\nsecurity teams out there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Developers behind PHP, a major programming language comparable to\nHTML and Python, have released a patch for a security flaw that had\nremained hidden for years before being detected using artificial\nintelligence (AI). They urged all users to update their systems\nimmediately.<\/p>\n
Madeline Lawrence, co-founder of Belgian cyber security firm Aikido\nSecurity, said details of the vulnerability had leaked before a fix was\nready to be implemented. A wave of cyberattacks followed.<\/p>\n
\u201cCompanies are now racing to update their systems to hold off hackers\nusing AI to exploit the vulnerability. This is a race against time,\u201d\nLawrence said.<\/p>\n
As companies and governments took precautionary measures, hacking\nattempts were reported to have surged into the millions. Cloud service\ngiants Cloudflare and Amazon Web Services (AWS) confirmed the sharp\nincrease.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the 10 hours before it was officially announced, we detected\nthousands of exploit attempts across our network,\u201d Cloudflare chief\nexecutive Matthew Prince said in a post on X.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat figure jumped to tens of thousands just 45 minutes after the\nannouncement, passed hundreds of thousands within two hours, and has now\nreached millions of attacks.\u201d<\/p>\n
The cyber shock was strongly felt in Asia. Japanese corporate giants\nincluding brokerage Nomura, banking group Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group\n(MUFG), airline ANA and rail operator East Japan Railway were forced to\nsuspend some of their online services temporarily.<\/p>\n
Beer producer Asahi Group Holdings also temporarily halted operations\non certain websites to assess the security impact. Insurer Tokio Marine\nHoldings suspended its main website as well.<\/p>\n
Japanese government bodies were affected too: the Ministry of\nFinance, the Meteorological Agency and the National Tax Agency switched\noff some online services to meet cyber security safety standards. The\nwidespread shutdowns reflected Tokyo\u2019s high level of concern,\nparticularly after TrendAI reported that cyber incidents in Japan during\nthe first nine months of this year had exceeded the total for the\nprevious year.<\/p>\n
The disruption also reached Europe. French telecommunications giant\nOrange suspended access to several PHP-based applications and websites\nat some of its subsidiaries. In Finland, government IT provider Valtori\nworked around the clock to install security fixes after temporarily\nshutting down all public government web services.<\/p>\n
\u201cRestoring services could take days or even weeks. In addition to\napplying patches, all systems must be tested thoroughly,\u201d Valtori\ndirector-general Hannu Naumanen said.<\/p>\n
In response to the growing threat, authorities across Asia\nimmediately ordered comprehensive cyber security inspections.<\/p>\n
China\u2019s Ministry of Industry urged all organisations and users to\ninspect their systems and upgrade to the most secure PHP version.\nBeijing also recommended strengthening cyber monitoring and regularly\nchanging passwords and account access keys.<\/p>\n
South Korea\u2019s government formally raised the private sector\u2019s cyber\nsecurity alert level to \u2018caution\u2019 and activated emergency response\nprotocols to prepare for possible follow-up attacks.<\/p>\n
Felix Kuhlenkamp, head of security at Germany\u2019s Digital Industry\nAssociation (Bitkom), said that although large corporations were\nrelatively quick to apply fixes, recovery would take much longer for\nsmaller organisations and complex IT systems.<\/p>\n
\u201cMany people run PHP-based websites but do not actively monitor them.\nIf a website is still using an old version of PHP that no longer\nreceives security updates, the entire system must be upgraded from\nscratch,\u201d Kuhlenkamp said.<\/p>", "url": "https:\/\/jawawa.id\/newsitem\/internet-outage-halts-banking-and-flights-1793004712", "image": "" }, "sponsor": "Okusi Associates", "sponsor_url": "https:\/\/okusiassociates.com" }