Several government websites across Europe were temporarily shut down on Wednesday after the discovery of two serious cybersecurity vulnerabilities. Authorities took this measure to prevent cyberattacks, as hackers had already begun attempting to exploit the security issues.
Websites in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Finland were affected, including pages of public institutions, schools, and hospitals.
According to Reuters, the vulnerabilities were found in PHP, a programming language widely used by many websites worldwide, including platforms like WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla.
The two security issues received a severity score of 9.2 out of 10. Under certain conditions, attackers could breach information systems and gain access to data stored on servers.
In France, the Ministry of the Interior decided to temporarily suspend the prefectures’ websites until security updates are installed.
Similar measures were taken in Germany, Belgium, and Finland. In the Netherlands, platforms through which citizens access public services, as well as websites of hospitals and institutions, were also shut down.
Even the National Cyber Security Center of the Netherlands temporarily suspended its own website.
Cloudflare, a company providing security services for millions of websites, announced that it had already observed initial exploitation attempts of the vulnerabilities and implemented additional protective measures.
PHP developers released updates on Wednesday to address the issues and urged website administrators to install them promptly. However, there is no evidence that all suspended sites were attacked. In most cases, authorities took preventive measures.
The cybersecurity alert follows another day of significant issues for digital services.
On Tuesday, an infrastructure failure at Google Cloud in London affected several online services, including Revolut and British banks Lloyds and HSBC.
Users faced difficulties accessing accounts, making payments, and transfers. Some services of the British judicial system were also disrupted. Google explained that the incident was caused by a power supply problem.
On Wednesday, the Orange mobile network experienced a major outage in France, as reported by News.ro. Customers across the country complained of being unable to make calls or losing signal. Tens of thousands of reports were recorded on the Downdetector platform.
Orange confirmed that the incident affected the national mobile network, including the operator’s Sosh services. The company announced that technical teams are working to identify the cause and restore services.
There is no information indicating a connection between these incidents. However, they share a common point: they affected services on which millions of people rely daily, from payments and banking operations to communications and access to public institutions.