Global scramble to fix critical cyber-security flaws as many websites taken offline

BBC update

ORGANISATIONS around the world are scrambling to fix a critical cyber-security flaw that could affect millions of websites.

The researcher who identified the flaw says it is "the most serious" issue he has ever found.

The vulnerability is within the PHP programming language, which is used to power many platforms. PHP collects information you need and presents it in a way you can read on the web.

The issue may affect around 30 million websites and could allow attackers to steal personal data, one expert tells the BBC.

Artificial intelligence identified the issue, prompting warnings from governments and cyber-security agencies to take sites offline - here's how the saga unfolded.

'Most serious vulnerability I've ever found,' says

researcher who helped uncover problem

"This is the most serious vulnerability I've ever found," says Ryan Austin, the researcher at cyber-security firm Calif who helped uncover the PHP flaw.

He tells Radio 4's Today programme that he's been studying PHP security for around 20 years.

You can think of the vulnerability "like a grammatical error in a sentence structure", but "instead of sounding silly, it actually leads to someone breaking into your house," he explains.

Asked what kind of information possible hackers could access, he says: "They would have access to your personal data... anything that you could possibly have stored".

PHP "has been around for a very long time" and is "in a lot of places that you wouldn't expect", he says, adding it is "basically very core to how the internet runs".