Poland temporarily takes some BIP websites offline over critical PHP vulnerabilities — RMF24

In Poland, the Central IT Center has temporarily taken some websites of the Public Information Bulletin (BIP) offline due to critical vulnerabilities in PHP. RMF24 reports, citing the country’s Ministry of Digital Affairs.

The vulnerabilities affect PHP from version 5.4

The CERT Polska team warned of serious security flaws in PHP, which is used by a large number of websites and content management systems, including WordPress, Joomla and WooCommerce. According to Poland’s Ministry of Digital Affairs, the vulnerabilities may allow attackers to remotely execute arbitrary system commands through errors in the memory management mechanism.

The issue affects all PHP versions starting from 5.4. The ministry said that installing a patched software version is an effective safeguard and urged website administrators to update PHP urgently.

More current news is available on the UA.News Telegram channel Telegram.

Not all BIP websites are unavailable

The temporary restriction applies only to pages operating in the Centralized Public Information Access System (SSDIP), including the ssdip.bip.gov.pl service. The system enables public institutions to run their own BIP websites. The ministry explained that the shutdown is necessary to implement protective measures and ensure the secure operation of the service.

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Affairs Krzysztof Gawkowski said that the Joint Cybersecurity Operations Center had already held a meeting and prepared an action plan that will be implemented. Administrators who identified signs of the vulnerabilities being exploited were asked to contact CERT Polska.

Following reports of critical PHP issues, government websites were also taken offline in Finland, the Netherlands, Japan and Australia. Some users were also unable to access certain sections of Wikipedia on Wednesday.