- A total of 32 UK government services have been taken temporarily offline and four remain partially unavailable following the discovery of a critical cyber-security vulnerability in the PHP programming language, which powers nearly 70 per cent of websites worldwide.
- Downing Street confirmed that no major public-facing critical services have been breached or hacked, explaining that services were temporarily taken offline as a precautionary measure while security work is carried out.
- Government experts are actively collaborating with international partners and OpenAI to identify and resolve potential exposures across affected systems following warnings issued by UK cyber-security chiefs.
- Scotland secretary Douglas Alexander reassured the public that next week's Budget has not been compromised, despite the official spending watchdog Office for Budget Responsibility taking its website offline.
- It comes as governments, banks, airlines, and telecommunications firms across countries including Japan, France, Finland, China, and South Korea have also taken services offline as a precaution to deploy security patches.
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