PHP2Shell puts dozens of UK government services out of service

The PHP2Shell security fiasco has forced 32 UK government services offline and left another four partially unavailable as Whitehall scrambles to patch the critical vulnerabilities wreaking havoc across the web.

The figures were disclosed in the House of Lords on Thursday, where tech minister Baroness Lloyd of Effra outlined the disruption following the discovery of two critical flaws in PHP.

"Currently, the information I have is that 32 government services are unavailable and four are partially unavailable," Lloyd told peers. "That has resulted largely from precautionary measures taken to protect systems while security updates and mitigations are applied."

"We are working very carefully with departments to restore the services safely and securely following that remediation activity," she added.

Whitehall has not published a full list of affected services, although the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) is among those known to have taken their websites offline, rather inconveniently with next week's Budget looming. …