Anadolu Ajansı reported that Baroness Lloyd of Effra, a parliamentary under-secretary in the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, told peers 32 government services were unavailable and four partly affected amid a PHP security issue.
Lloyd attributed most interruptions to agencies’ security precautions while they applied updates and safeguards, Anadolu Ajansı reported. She said agencies were warned before the issue became public and asked to review systems for exposure and prepare defenses.
Anadolu Ajansı reported that Downing Street said major public-facing critical services were unaffected. Downing Street added that temporary outages among a limited number of services did not mean those systems had been hacked.
The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) urged organizations running PHP to install the fix. If they could not update, the NCSC recommended temporary safeguards. It advised considering taking systems offline only if those safeguards could not be applied or would take too long.
Lloyd said the NCSC had sent 50,000 notices to businesses and other organizations with protective guidance, Anadolu Ajansı reported. She said the government was working with agencies to restore services safely.
