Governments working to identify exposure after global cyber-security warning

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, including Amazon, are rushing to protect systems that use PHP before hackers can exploit the flaws.The flaws were first discovered by AI, after which governments urged anyone who uses PHP to address them.Amazon was targeted in multiple attempts, which it said occurred before an embargo on the warning was lifted. It added that it was unclear how actors knew about the vulnerabilities. A UK government spokesperson urged "all organisations, private and public, large and small" to follow guidance to protect their systems. The UK's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), as well as its counterparts in the EU and Australia, earlier urged those who use PHP to apply the fixes."Where immediate remediation is not feasible, organisations should consider taking the system offline until it can be fully mitigated," the NCSC said in a statement.PHP powers a vast number of platforms, including online shops, Wikipedia and WordPress – the content management system behind many websites like blogs.