Websites taken down worldwide as critical cyber-security update issued

The Finnish government, Edinburgh council and the BBC are among those to have taken down sites and pages ahead of a software update to a programming language which underpins many online services.

Two critical vulnerabilities have been found with the PHP programming language, which is widely used across the internet. A fix was issued on Wednesday afternoon.

The flaws were discovered by AI, with cyber-security firm Wiz saying they were the "most severe vulnerabilities ever discovered" by the tech, which is reshaping the cyber landscape.

Multiple national cyber-security agencies have urged organisations to rapidly adopt the updates, or consider taking their websites offline.

Finland has temporarily shut down the government's public web services, while the Netherlands' cyber-security agency said it was taking its own website offline due to the vulnerabilities.

Meanwhile, Edinburgh council's website has become inaccessible, as well as the online homes for several BBC programmes including Doctor Who and The Traitors.

They have not confirmed a link to PHP - BBC News has approached them for comment.

Other websites, including the art platform DeviantArt, have said they are " temporarily down for maintenance , external " without specifying the reason.

The vulnerabilities were discovered by cyber-security researchers at the firms Calif and Wiz. They used state-of-the art AI, made by OpenAI, to find the flaws.

OpenAI said in a blog post , external it was "one of the most impactful security issues in recent memory".

According to the firms, they had gone undetected for more than a decade.

"Frontier models were critical to making this process practical, enabling us to develop and adapt working exploits across multiple applications in hours," Wiz said in a blog post.

It has estimated "roughly 70%" of the internet is affected, though the BBC is unable to verify that figure.

The Netherlands' National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, an agency of the Dutch government, has taken down its website.