Why Some Websites May Be Temporarily Unavailable This Evening

Some websites may be temporarily unavailable this evening, Wednesday 21 October 2026, while their operators install and test updates. The updates follow the discovery of two critical security vulnerabilities in PHP, widely used software that helps websites work behind the scenes.

The vulnerabilities could allow attackers to run unauthorised commands on affected website servers without logging in. Both have a severity rating of 9.2 out of 10.

Security fixes have been released, and Ireland’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has published an official advisory. It strongly recommends installing updates for vulnerable systems with the highest priority, after thorough testing.

The advisory recommends prioritising updates to internet-facing PHP installations, then other affected installations. It also says unsupported versions of PHP should be isolated where mitigations cannot be applied.

CERT-EU, the cybersecurity service for the European Union’s institutions, recommends immediate updates. Where this is not feasible, it says organisations should consider temporarily disconnecting affected internet-facing services until fixes have been installed and verified. Taking a website offline can be a protective measure, and it does not, on its own, mean that the site has been hacked.

The Dutch government has confirmed precautionary shutdowns involving Overheid.nl, MijnOverheid.nl and DigiD. Separately, Reuters has reported precautionary shutdowns affecting government websites in France, Germany, Belgium and Finland.

Wikimedia’s status notice listed Toolforge, Cloud VPS and Wikibase Cloud as offline, while several other services had already been restored. Wikimedia, which runs Wikipedia, also warned of possible outages affecting its wikis.

At the time of writing, Cork Safety Alerts had not verified any specific outage affecting an Irish website, though that does not mean none has occurred. There is no confirmed common restoration time for affected websites. If a website you need will not load, or shows a message saying it is unavailable, try again later or check the organisation’s official channels for updates.

The NCSC advises all organisations to identify all PHP installations in their networks and infrastructure, including any contained within vendor software. Businesses, clubs and community groups with their own websites may wish to check with their web developer or hosting provider that the updates have been applied.

Information checked at 17:45 IST on Wednesday 21 October 2026.