32 UK Government Services Offline Amid Global PHP Security Alert

Thirty-two UK government services were offline and four others partially unavailable on Thursday, October 22, as authorities responded to a global cybersecurity issue involving PHP.

Baroness Lloyd told the House of Lords that the disruption largely reflected precautionary measures to protect systems while security updates were applied.

Downing Street said no major public-facing critical services had been affected.

The disruption comes as governments and organisations worldwide address vulnerabilities in the widely used programming language. Reuters reported that PHP developers had released patches, while some websites were temporarily taken offline as a precaution.