Statistics Canada's website was still offline on Thursday morning, one of several federal sites taken down as a precaution after a serious security flaw was found in the PHP programming language, Global News reports.
The Canadian Intellectual Property Office site went dark on Wednesday, and British Columbia's government also pulled some pages. Artificial Intelligence Minister Evan Solomon said the shutdowns followed advice from the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security and were meant to protect government systems and personal data.
PHP runs a large share of the world's websites. Its developers issued urgent fixes on Wednesday for long-hidden vulnerabilities reportedly uncovered with the help of AI, but details leaked before patches were ready. Cloudflare said attempts to exploit the flaw rose from thousands to millions within hours, and the FBI warned it could let attackers run code remotely.
Source: Global News
