Finland temporarily shuts down government websites as a precaution for critical vulnerabilities
The move is due to vulnerabilities found in widely used PHP software, which acts as the primary back-end backbone of the web.
On Wednesday, Finland's government websites were temporarily taken offline as a precautionary measure against two critical security vulnerabilities in the widely used PHP software, according to the Government ICT Centre (Valtori). The shutdowns occurred due to the discovery of these vulnerabilities, which affect the software's functionality on web servers rather than end-users' browsers.
The developers of PHP announced they would release patches for the vulnerabilities later in the day. EU cybersecurity officials have advised organizations without the fixes to take down their affected webpages. In Finland, the shutdowns began in the early afternoon, with the National Land Survey's website among those affected by midday.
Some Yle web services experienced outages during the day. The Helsinki Book Fair's site, the Finnish Film Foundation's website, and other Finnish websites were also taken down. Valtori's director general, Hannu Naumanen, confirmed the shutdowns after 1pm, stating that services would resume once the patches were implemented at 5pm Finnish time.
While there was no evidence the vulnerabilities were being actively exploited as of early Wednesday, the Cyber Security Centre of Traficom had warned that the situation could change rapidly.
Written by urgent.news from Yle News Finland's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
