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NHS Scotland site - and many others - taken down

Deadlinenews • October 21, 2026

THE NHS SCOTLAND website is one of many which has been taken down on Wednesday while IT companies address a cyber security flaw in PHP programming language.

This is the language which makes a large part of the internet work.

A fix was issued on Wednesday afternoon, but the NHS Scotland site and the Edinburgh Council website are both unavailable.

This is described by an IT expert as a “serious security vulnerability identified in the PHP programming language and released to the internet on Wednesday as a zero day public exploit”.

The website which you are reading, and others in the Deadline News stable, run on WordPress and we understand that the flaws could have allowed an attacker to put “malicious code” on a server hosting the sites. This could allow services to be disrupted.

Many IT companies who run websites have meantime applied patches against such a vulnerability.

The full story

This article is one source in a clustered incident — the cluster page carries the summary, timeline and every other outlet covering it.

Critical PHP Vulnerabilities Prompt Global Website Shutdowns On October 21, 2026, the PHP Foundation disclosed two critical vulnerabilities, CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619, which could allow unauthenticated remote code execution on PHP-based websites. Affecting an estimated 70% of the internet, these flaws prompted immediate patch releases and widespread precautionary measures, including the temporary shutdown of numerous government and business websites across Europe and Canada. Cybersecurity agencies, including CISA and the FBI, have urged organizations to update their PHP installations immediately or take their systems offline until the patches are applied. Reports indicate that hackers have begun probing for these vulnerabilities, although no mass exploitation has been confirmed yet. The vulnerabilities were discovered with the assistance of AI tools, highlighting the dual-use nature of AI in cybersecurity. The PHP Foundation has emphasized the urgency of applying the patches to mitigate potential risks. 34 sources 74

Extracted Entities

NHS Scotland site - and many others - taken down

The full story

Extracted Entities

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Companies (2)

Countries (1)

Platforms (2)