Millions of hacking attempts as companies, governments rush to patch PHP flaws

TOKYO/BEIJING/AMSTERDAM, Oct 22 (Reuters) – Global firms and governments rushed on Thursday ​to patch critical flaws in the PHP programming language that underpins much of the internet, as a cloud firm reported millions of hacking attempts after vulnerabilities were disclosed.

The push came when governments in Europe and elsewhere took websites offline as a precaution on Wednesday while website operators scrambled to secure systems running the software.

The emergency shutdowns of banking, airline, rail, tax and government services from Tokyo to Helsinki mark one of the most dramatic tests of the decades-old programming tools that keep the web running, exposing how deeply governments and companies depend on code that few people understand. “I’ve not seen anything like this in a long, long time,” Microsoft (MSFT.O), opens new tab CEO Satya Nadella ​said at an event in Germany on Thursday, saying the incident showed the importance of building software that can be maintained securely as systems grow more complex. “It was a long day ​and a long night, I know, for all the IT and security folks.”