UK government services offline after global PHP cybersecurity threat

Some “limited” government services may temporarily be offline while work is carried out to address potential PHP cyber security issues, Downing Street has said.

No major public-facing critical services in the UK have been impacted by a severe vulnerability identified in the PHP programming language, Downing Street has confirmed.

Organisations around the world have been scrambling to address the flaw in PHP, which powers almost 70 per cent of websites according to cybersecurity firm Cloudflare. UK cybersecurity chiefs alerted organisations to the "critical security issue" on Wednesday.

A No 10 spokeswoman said on Thursday: "Work has already taken place across government to identify and fix potential exposures to our systems, and our experts are continuing to work closely with both OpenAI and international partners on this issue.

"No large public-facing critical services are being affected by the exercise, but some limited services may temporarily be offline while security work is carried out.

"But this does not mean they were hacked, and work continues to resolve any issues."

The spokeswoman noted it was not "standard practice" to detail which specific government services had been affected.

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