News and Analysis

A critical vulnerability affecting all PHP versions on Windows devices has been discovered by the US Department of Health & Human Services. The flaw could let an attacker take control of a server. While the risk is hard to quantify, it is presumed that Windows systems running Japanese, traditional Chinese or simplified Chinese are vulnerable. Cybersecurity researchers have already detected attempts to exploit the flaw. The advice is to update the PHP installation to the latest version and to apply a ‘mod_rewrite’ rule to block attacks.