Highland Council goes offline in face of global cyber

Highland Council has joined a host of UK and European governmental bodies in reacting to a critical cyber-security threat by taking websites offline.

The local authority says the move is precautionary with no evidence that any of its systems or services have been impacted.

International governments and agencies have urged websites to address two critical cyber-security flaws in a programming language which powers much of the internet.

The vulnerabilities were found within PHP programming, with a fix issued this afternoon (Wednesday).

Organisations unable to apply fixes in time have been urged by multiple cyber-security agencies to consider taking their sites down.

Those doing so include the BBC, the Finnish government and Edinburgh council, as well as Highland and many others.

The flaws were discovered by Artificial Intelligence (AI), with cyber-security firm Wiz describing them as the "most severe vulnerabilities ever discovered" by the controversial technology.

Under the title ‘website maintenance’, a Highland Council spokesman said: “We are aware of a worldwide security incident affecting web services.

“There are no indications of this impacting the council.

However, as a precaution we are temporarily taking our website offline while our systems are reviewed.

“We apologise for the inconvenience caused and will restore services as soon as possible.”

The situation prompted a host of agencies and Governments, including the US and Japan, to make statements.