TOKYO - Some Japanese ministry webpages have been partially suspended as a preventive measure following the detection of vulnerabilities in the widely used PHP programming language, the government said Thursday, as websites across the country were halted over the issue.
Confirming the suspensions to parts of websites including for the Finance Ministry and the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara told a regular press conference in Tokyo that no damage to government websites related to the PHP flaws has been reported.
Kihara urged operators of websites using the language to apply the patch as quickly as possible or take the webpages offline to reduce risks until the fix can be implemented.
Suspensions spread among local authorities as well on Thursday, with the prefectural police in southwestern Japan's Saga saying they had temporarily taken down their website as a precautionary measure. Some functions on the websites for Osaka Prefecture and the city of Osaka in western Japan were also halted.
The Tokyo metropolitan government suspended part of its services, including a website for its official app. Some have since resumed operations, with the government noting it has not confirmed any data breaches.
The website Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi uses as a lawmaker was also briefly down for maintenance from Wednesday night and restored Thursday morning, an official at her office said.
OpenAI, the U.S. developer of the AI chatbot ChatGPT, said its models had helped discover the security flaws and that it had assisted in efforts to prepare fixes over the past two months.
It said on X that the move "marks a new phase, where AI can find security bugs with internet-scale impact."
Matthew Prince, CEO of U.S. tech firm Cloudflare Inc. that offers cybersecurity services, also said on X that attempts to exploit the weaknesses surged from "tens of thousands in the 45 minutes post announcement, hundreds of thousands within two hours, and millions now."
Moves to address vulnerabilities found in the widely used PHP programming language continued across Japan's businesses and service providers, with MUFG Bank and JR West announcing that they were conducting extraordinary system maintenance.
The Japanese megabank said some of its services, including online opening of investment trust accounts, would be unavailable. West Japan Railway Co. said about 60 of its group websites were suspended.
Restaurant operator Zensho Holdings Co., meanwhile, said it had halted app services for its Sukiya beef bowl chain and Hama-sushi conveyor belt sushi restaurant chain as a preventive measure from Wednesday night.
The vulnerabilities prompted governments and companies around the world to temporarily shut down websites amid concern that the flaws could be exploited for cyberattacks.
According to a European research organization, PHP, which is mainly designed for servers, is used by 69.3 percent of websites worldwide whose server-side programming language is known.
The developer had announced by the early hours of Wednesday that two major vulnerabilities had been discovered. Patches have been released to fix the vulnerabilities.
