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Millions of hacking attempts as companies, govts rush to patch flaws
Reuters, Tokyo
Published: 22 Oct 2026, 08:21 PM
Global firms and governments rushed on Thursday to patch
critical flaws in the PHP programming language that underpins much of the
internet, as a cloud firm reported millions of hacking attempts after
vulnerabilities were disclosed.
The push came after governments in Europe and elsewhere took
websites offline as a precaution on Wednesday while website operators scrambled
to secure systems running the software.
The emergency shutdowns of banking, airline, rail, tax and
government services from Tokyo to Helsinki mark one of the most dramatic tests
of the decades-old programming tools that keep the web running, exposing how
deeply governments and companies depend on code that few people understand.
"I've not seen anything like this in a long, long time," Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said at an event in Germany on Thursday, saying the incident showed the importance of building software that can be maintained securely as systems grow more complex.
"It was a long day and a long night, I know, for all
the IT and security folks."
PHP key to internet's foundations like HTML, Python
The developers of PHP – a key computing language like HTML
and Python – released fixes on Wednesday for vulnerabilities that had lurked in
the software for years until they were uncovered using AI, urging users to
"update immediately".
Madeline Lawrence, co-founder of Belgian cybersecurity firm
Aikido Security, said that details of the flaws had become public before fixes
were ready, with attacks reported since.
"Companies are racing to update against attackers who
can use AI to exploit them. That's the whole race," she said.
As companies and governments deployed patches and suspended
websites as a precaution, hacking attempts surged into the millions, according
to cloud services firm Cloudflare.
"In the 10 hours before it was publicly announced,
across the network we saw thousands of attempts to exploit it," Cloudflare
CEO Matthew Prince said in a post on X late on Wednesday.
"That jumped to tens of thousands in the 45 minutes
post announcement, hundreds of thousands within 2 hours, and millions
now."
Impact from Japan to Finland
Japanese companies including brokerage Nomura, lender Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, airline ANA and East Japan Railway said on Thursday they were temporarily suspending some internet services as part of emergency measures.
Brewer Asahi Group Holdings temporarily suspended certain
websites and systems and was conducting a security impact assessment. Insurer
Tokio Marine Holdings said it had suspended its group website.
Japan's Ministry of Finance and Meteorological Agency partially suspended online services to implement safety measures, while Japan's National Tax Agency temporarily took down its service.
The precautionary shutdowns show Japan's growing concerns
over cybersecurity, as the country recorded more cyber incidents in the first
nine months of the year than in all of last year, according to data from
TrendAI.
French telecoms group Orange said it had temporarily
suspended access to certain PHP-based websites and applications across several
subsidiaries as a precaution.
Tencent Cloud, one of China's largest cloud-computing
providers, urged customers to install updated PHP versions but stopped short of
calling for widespread website shutdowns.
Finland's state IT services provider Valtori said it had
continued installing PHP security patches overnight and was gradually lifting
precautionary service blocks after shutting down government public web services
a day earlier.
"Restoring services can take days or even weeks, as in addition to updates, the systems need to be carefully tested," Valtori Director General Hannu Naumanen said in a statement.
Valtori said the outages were not caused by exploitation of
the vulnerabilities or by a cyber breach, and that it was not aware of any active
exploitation of the flaws.
Some fixes may take weeks to implement
Several Asian governments ordered cybersecurity inspections
related to the PHP vulnerabilities on Thursday.
China's industry ministry urged organizations and users to
inspect systems and upgrade to the latest secure version of PHP. It also
recommended strengthening cybersecurity monitoring and changing accounts,
passwords and keys where necessary.
South Korea raised its private-sector cybersecurity alert
level and activated emergency response measures, citing concerns over an
increased risk of hacking attacks.
Felix Kuhlenkamp, head of security at German digital
industry association Bitkom, said that many larger operators had already
carried out updates, but that for complex IT systems and smaller organizations
it could take longer.
"They may run a website using PHP but don't really keep a close eye on it," he said. "If a website is based on an old version of PHP for which there is no security update, the entire system must be updated."