Warnings were issued by international agencies including Japan’s National Cybersecurity Office, the U.S. National Security Agency and CERT-EU, the European Commission’s cybersecurity body. | REUTERS
Oct 22, 2026
Banks, businesses and government ministries in Japan took websites offline for maintenance on Thursday after critical security flaws were announced in a programming language used across 70% of sites worldwide.
In a message posted on X on Wednesday night, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi urged people to check whether the websites they maintain use the programming language PHP, and to apply the update immediately once it became available at 11 p.m. on Wednesday — or to temporarily suspend web services until they could.
Public access to some content on the websites of the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry and the Finance Ministry was temporarily suspended, Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara said at a news conference on Thursday.
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Source: The Japan Times · Ariana King
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