PHP2Shell: Governments on high alert over critical website flaw; Wikipedia, hospitals, school portals go dark; what users should know
A large chunk of the internet went offline on Wednesday, and most of it was switched off on purpose. Government websites in the Netherlands, Finland, France and Denmark, along with universities, hospitals and sites as big as Wikipedia, pulled systems down after two serious security flaws were found in PHP. Most people have never heard of PHP, but it is the software running behind roughly 70% of all websites, from news sites and online shops to personal blogs.
The flaws, now nicknamed PHP2Shell, let a hacker take over the computer that runs a website without needing a password.
