Government websites go dark after code flaw exposes vulnerabilities

And the programmers of PHP say they've identified two critical vulnerabilities. It is essentially considered as part of the backbone of the Internet. It runs in the background of several popular websites, control panels, platforms. And essentially, any vulnerability in PHP puts a wide swath of the Internet and millions of servers at risk. And the programmers of PHP say they've identified two critical vulnerabilities, and they have released a patch fixing those vulnerabilities. urged clients to apply the fix to their sites ASAP. That's not always an easy thing. You may have a website, but it might be run by someone else. You've got to get in touch with the company that runs your website, make sure they've applied the patch. So what many websites, not just government websites, but websites all across the world have been doing is just taking their websites down in the meantime until those fixes can be made so that at least they're not subject to attacks. Those websites include government websites. We've also seen some here in Canada that have gone down. For instance, federally, the website for the Canadian Centre for Cybersecurity is currently down. You check it. That, though, we've checked in with federal government authorities. We are unable to get a response at this time as to whether that has to do with the security vulnerability. One we do know for sure is related, though, is the STM, Montreal's transit agency. Their website has been down for most of the day. There's a message on it saying that it's currently unavailable. Please try again later. Thank you for your understanding. They clarified on their X page in a post that says, quote, in the wake of a security vulnerability that is putting a large number of websites worldwide at risk, our website has been taken offline as a precautionary measure. No idea at this point when it will be put back up. There are cybersecurity agencies out there that say they are already detecting some attacks that are utilizing this vulnerability. So there is definitely a risk there.