Thirty-two government services are currently offline and four are partially unavailable due to a PHP cyber security issue, according to Baroness Lloyd, parliamentary under-secretary of state at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.
Baroness Lloyd explained that most of the disruptions stem from temporary safeguards put in place while IT teams install fixes and protective measures across affected systems.
The minister emphasized that officials took early action before the issue became widely known, enabling the National Cyber Security Centre to collaborate with cybersecurity firms in advance of the public announcement.
This advance planning ensured that affected organizations could quickly apply security updates and other protective actions to help their users, Baroness Lloyd stated.
After the PHP vulnerability was exposed, the government distributed 50,000 alerts to businesses and organizations, detailing the corrective actions they needed to implement.
An official confirmed that no major UK services critical to the public will be impacted, while efforts are underway, together with OpenAI and the NCSC, to eliminate weaknesses in government IT infrastructure.
The glitch in PHP has also impacted gaming platforms, Amazon, and online forums like Wikipedia, with attempts at exploiting the vulnerability spotted within hours of it being announced.
UK cybersecurity authorities warned companies about the severe risk on Wednesday, and Scottish Secretary Douglas Alexander clarified that the upcoming Budget remains secure despite the Office for Budget Responsibility’s website being affected.
Douglas Alexander told Times Radio that no indication whatsoever of a breach of Budget security has been found, and that new security protocols have been initiated.
The code affected, PHP, is used by almost 70% of websites that people visit on a daily basis and powers popular platforms like WordPress, making the vulnerability a significant concern for online security.