PHP flaw: Berlin police take online station offline as a precaution
Over a critical PHP vulnerability, Berlin's police, fire brigade, Charité hospital and universities took their websites fully or partly offline on Wednesday. Emergency calls still go to 110.
Archive image · Photo: Auge24.eu / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0 (cropped and resized)
A newly discovered worldwide vulnerability in the PHP programming language knocked numerous Berlin online services offline on Wednesday. The Berlin police's online station (Internetwache) was unreachable, as was the website of the Federal Police. The Berlin fire brigade also took its site offline from late afternoon. Police urged people to dial 110 in emergencies; for now, reports can only be filed at police stations.
At the police situation centre, it was initially unclear when the online station would be back. The Charité hospital was also temporarily unreachable, but according to a spokesperson only the website's visibility was restricted, such as online appointment booking. The hospital stressed this was not a cyberattack but a precaution. Freie Universität, Humboldt University, the Berliner Hochschule für Technik and the WZB research centre also restricted their services.
The State of Berlin's websites were largely back online by early evening, with some subpages still offline, according to Senate spokesperson Christine Richter. The Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) issued a warning on Wednesday, urging operators to install the security updates quickly. PHP's developers released the patched version 8.5.12 on Wednesday.