Dutch website outages linked to critical PHP security vulnerabilities affected more than 100 municipalities, provinces and water boards, Dutch news agency ANP reported, according to an October 22 report from BusinessLine. The disruption extended to national institutions as European governments and universities restricted access to websites while assessing their exposure.
Key Takeaways
- ANP linked disruption at more than 100 Dutch local authorities to their use of software provider Notubiz.
- The Dutch House of Representatives and National Cyber Security Centre websites were unreachable at 2 p.m. local time.
- PHP developers said patches were released Wednesday, while Cloudflare reported early attempts to exploit the vulnerabilities.
Table of Contents
- Dutch website outages highlight shared-provider exposure
- Precautionary restrictions extend beyond the Netherlands
- Patches arrive as exploitation attempts emerge
- Conclusion
Dutch website outages highlight shared-provider exposure
The affected municipalities, provinces and water boards use a service supplied by Notubiz, according to ANP. Notubiz lists 254 Dutch local authorities as customers on its website, but the report did not establish that every customer was affected. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Separately, the websites of the Dutch House of Representatives and the National Cyber Security Centre could not be reached as of 2 p.m. local time. The report did not identify Notubiz as the provider for those national institutions.
Precautionary restrictions extend beyond the Netherlands
Finland’s government said it was taking all public-facing internet services offline as a precaution. Some universities in Germany and Austria also pulled their websites, including the University of Freiburg and the University of Vienna.
The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre advised organizations Wednesday to identify systems running PHP, check for malicious activity and consider taking them offline until the vulnerabilities could be mitigated. The shutdowns were precautionary measures, not evidence that every affected institution had suffered a breach.
Patches arrive as exploitation attempts emerge
PHP’s maintainers said Wednesday they had released updates addressing the two vulnerabilities and urged users to install them immediately. A White House official said the US government was coordinating adoption of the fix with federal agencies and technology companies.
Cloudflare chief technology officer Dane Knecht said the company had observed early attacks attempting to exploit the flaws and had introduced protections for customers using its technology.
Finding every exposed system may complicate the response. Cybersecurity firm Huntress said PHP powers sites using WordPress, Drupal, Joomla and Magento, and can also sit within software that does not advertise its use of the language.
Conclusion
The Dutch disruption shows how a shared software service can extend a security response across many public bodies. Although patches were released, the report provided no timetable for restoring the affected websites.
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