PHP vulnerability takes more than 100,000 Swiss websites offline

More than 100,000 websites hosted by a Basel-based company were temporarily taken offline after a newly identified vulnerability in PHP, SRF reports. Swiss authorities say they have not yet detected attacks linked to the flaw.

Cyon, which provides the technical infrastructure for websites, took all its hosted sites offline as a precaution, founder and chief executive David Burkhardt told SRF. The company serves organisations including clubs, small and medium-sized businesses, private bloggers and corporations. Its sites were back online by Thursday morning.

Burkhardt said the temporary shutdown was a difficult decision, but a precaution against possible data leaks, job losses or damage to entire systems if websites were hacked.

The websites of the University of Geneva and the canton of Basel-Stadt were also temporarily unavailable. The university said its measure was precautionary and that its security teams were working to restore access. Basel-Stadt said it had found no evidence of data being taken.

The Federal Office for Cyber Security said it knew of no attacks in Switzerland that could be linked to the specific vulnerabilities. It cautioned that incidents might not yet have been detected or reported and said it was continuing to assess the situation.

The office urged website operators to check whether their sites were affected and install the security update. About 70 per cent of websites worldwide run on PHP, according to web statistics platform W3Techs.