TOKYO, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- The Japanese government has received no reports of damage caused by critical vulnerabilities in the widely used PHP programming language, Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara said here Thursday, as government agencies and businesses suspended some online services as a precaution.
Some government ministry websites, including those of the Finance Ministry and the Health Ministry, have been partially suspended to mitigate potential risks, Kihara told a regular press conference.
He urged operators of websites using PHP to apply the security patches as soon as possible or take affected pages offline until the fixes can be implemented. The government will continue to issue warnings about the flaws, he said.
Precautionary suspensions had also spread to local authorities. The Saga Prefectural Police in southwestern Japan temporarily took down their website, while some functions on the websites of Osaka Prefecture and the city of Osaka were also suspended.
The website used by Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi in her capacity as a lawmaker was temporarily taken offline for maintenance from Wednesday night and restored Thursday morning, an official at her office said.
Businesses have also taken preventive measures. MUFG Bank said some services, including online applications for investment trust accounts, would be unavailable, while Mizuho Bank and Daiwa Securities Co. have been conducting emergency maintenance. West Japan Railway Co. said about 60 websites operated by its group companies had been suspended.
Restaurant operator Zensho Holdings Co. said it had suspended app services for its Sukiya beef bowl chain and Hama-sushi conveyor belt sushi chain as a precaution from Wednesday night.
The vulnerabilities, identified with the assistance of artificial intelligence and disclosed on Wednesday, have prompted governments and businesses worldwide to temporarily suspend websites and online services amid concerns that the flaws could be exploited in cyberattacks.
The PHP development team announced that it had identified two major vulnerabilities by the early hours of Wednesday and released security patches to address them. ■
