The City of Edinburgh Council's website has been taken offline after critical cybersecurity flaws were discovered in PHP, a programming language that powers much of the internet.
Two vulnerabilities were found on Wednesday, October 21. The council is understood to be among organisations that were unable to apply fixes in time and have been urged to take their sites down.
Wider impact across Europe
Other affected sites include pages on the BBC website - the online homes for several programmes including Doctor Who and The Traitors - and the official site for the government in Finland. The Netherlands' cyber-security agency also said it was taking its own website offline due to the vulnerabilities.
As of 5.30pm, Edinburgh Council's site remained inaccessible, displaying a message for users attempting to view any of its web pages.
Council response and maintenance message
The message reads: "This website is temporarily offline. This site is currently closed for maintenance. Please check back in a few minutes."
A spokesperson has since told Edinburgh Live the council is waiting on an update from its web provider, and it is hoped to get the site up and running again as soon as possible.
A post on social media from the council's official account reads: "We're sorry our website is currently offline. This is to allow essential maintenance.
"We'll let you know when it's back online. If you have an urgent enquiry in the meantime, please call us on 0131 200 2000."
Discovery and security advice
The flaws were discovered by AI, with cybersecurity company Wiz saying they were the "most severe vulnerabilities ever discovered" by the tech, reports the BBC.
Other websites, including the art platform DeviantArt, have told users they are "temporarily down for maintenance, external" without sharing a reason.
The UK's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), as well as its equivalent in the EU and Australia, have urged those who use PHP to apply the fixes.
The NCSC said in a note: "Where immediate remediation is not feasible, organisations should consider taking the system offline until it can be fully mitigated."
PHP was created for web development. It is used on servers to implement what you see when you visit websites. Not all websites use it, however it powers a large portion of the internet.
