It's been relentless' say IT workers on frontline of PHP cyber security scramble
Microsoft boss Satya Nadella says he has not seen anything like the PHP emergency .
Referencing the ongoing global efforts to fix the critical cyber-security flaw in millions of websites, he told a conference "it was a long day and a long night, I know, for all the IT and security folks".
Matthew Prince, the boss of internet infrastructure firm Cloudflare, wrote on X on Thursday that the company saw "thousands" of attempts to exploit the PHP vulnerabilities across its network in the 10 hours before it was publicly announced.
Cyber security researcher Ryan Austin, who has been researching PHP security for the last 20 years, said he discovered the flaw in the programming language.
But two critical flaws were found with the system that led to the emergency response, with national cyber-security authorities urging IT teams to download a security fix urgently or take websites and servers offline.
In the attack, an anonymous internet address attempted to target weaknesses in one of Amazon's decoy or "honeypot" systems, the company's security chief CJ Moses said.
Organisations and businesses are still scrambling to update their systems after cyber-security flaws were revealed in a widely-used programming language, PHP.
While the impact of the PHP flaw remains to be seen, disruption continued for businesses and organisations after many sites were taken down on Wednesday.
The UK government says it is working to identify any potential exposure in its online services, after critical cyber-security flaws were identified in the PHP programming language that underpins a significant number of the world's websites.
Governments and some of the world's biggest companies are rushing to protect systems that use PHP before hackers can exploit the flaws.
It added there were further "exploitation attempts" once the embargo on the flaw warning was lifted.
What happened
Referencing the ongoing global efforts to fix the critical cyber-security flaw in millions of websites, he told a conference "it was a long day and a long night, I know, for all the IT and security folks".
Matthew Prince, the boss of internet infrastructure firm Cloudflare, wrote on X on Thursday that the company saw "thousands" of attempts to exploit the PHP vulnerabilities across its network in the 10 hours before it was publicly announced.
What changed
Cyber security researcher Ryan Austin, who has been researching PHP security for the last 20 years, said he discovered the flaw in the programming language.
But two critical flaws were found with the system that led to the emergency response, with national cyber-security authorities urging IT teams to download a security fix urgently or take websites and servers offline.
Who is affected
In the attack, an anonymous internet address attempted to target weaknesses in one of Amazon's decoy or "honeypot" systems, the company's security chief CJ Moses said.
Organisations and businesses are still scrambling to update their systems after cyber-security flaws were revealed in a widely-used programming language, PHP.
Why it matters
While the impact of the PHP flaw remains to be seen, disruption continued for businesses and organisations after many sites were taken down on Wednesday.
The UK government says it is working to identify any potential exposure in its online services, after critical cyber-security flaws were identified in the PHP programming language that underpins a significant number of the world's websites.
Technical details
Governments and some of the world's biggest companies are rushing to protect systems that use PHP before hackers can exploit the flaws.
It added there were further "exploitation attempts" once the embargo on the flaw warning was lifted.
These vulnerabilities are flaws in PHP itself, not in the hosted application or its configuration," the NSA said in a later update.
Response
Jones said it felt like "the race was on" when the patch launched at 15:00 BST on Wednesday.
While the PHP Foundation intended to release its discovery later this month along with a complete fix for the problem, usually referred to by software developers as a "patch", details of the flaw were leaked on social media on Tuesday.
What security teams should do
The company said it "automatically detected and restricted malicious scanning attempts targeting this vulnerability." PHP powers a vast number of platforms, including online shops, Wikipedia and WordPress – the content management system behind many websites like blogs.
But Austin said this incident is not necessarily bad news because organisations would now "run and patch PHP immediately" if they haven't already.
Attribution
BBC News: Microsoft boss Satya Nadella says he has not seen anything like the PHP emergency "in a long, long time".
BBC News: Organisations and businesses are still scrambling to update their systems after cyber-security flaws were revealed in a widely-used programming language, PHP.
BBC News: The UK government says it is working to identify any potential exposure in its online services, after critical cyber-security flaws were identified in the PHP programming language that underpins a significant number of the world's websites.
What to watch next
Watch for new exploitation reports and updated indicators of compromise.
Watch for updated vendor guidance and fixed-version details.