Government websites in Europe and elsewhere go dark as software flaw sparks security scramble

Government websites in Europe and elsewhere went offline on Wednesday after the disclosure of critical vulnerabilities in a widely used programming language sent website operators scrambling to protect their systems. Developers of the PHP programming language said Tuesday they had identified two critical vulnerabilities and urged users to update their sites as soon as a fix was released. They said around 1345 GMT on Wednesday that a new version fixing the vulnerabilities was live. But with reports that hackers were exploiting the flaws to break into websites, government agencies in the Netherlands and Finland were among those that took sites...