Websites of banks, businesses and government agencies in Japan were temporarily taken offline for maintenance after a serious PHP vulnerability was disclosed. The government urged organizations to check whether they use PHP and apply the update if it was available for release at 11:00.
A serious vulnerability in PHP, a programming language widely used around the world, was disclosed. Banks, businesses and government ministries in Japan took websites offline for maintenance on Thursday after critical security flaws were announced in a programming language used across 70% of sites worldwide. This report, together with comments from Japanese government officials, explained the background to the temporary suspension of website access.
In a message posted on X on Wednesday night, the Chief Cabinet Secretary asked relevant organizations to check whether the websites they operate use PHP and, if an update was available at 11:00, to apply it immediately or temporarily suspend their web services. Public access to some content on the websites of the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare and the Ministry of Finance was temporarily suspended at a press conference on Thursday.