PHP2Shell vulnerabilities: Several websites worldwide, including services operated by Japan’s Finance Ministry, US human-resources platform BambooHR, the Port of Rotterdam in the Netherlands, and the Wikimedia Foundation, which operates Wikipedia, went offline on Wednesday (October 21). The precautionary shutdowns came as governments and cybersecurity agencies scrambled to address two critical vulnerabilities in PHP, one of the most widely used programming languages on the internet. The flaws have collectively been dubbed PHP2Shell.

The developers of PHP have since released security updates addressing both vulnerabilities.

Multiple cybersecurity agencies have advised organisations to update affected systems immediately or temporarily take them offline if the updates cannot be installed at once.…