Hungary has temporarily taken the magyarorszag.hu government portal and several other official websites offline due to a serious cybersecurity threat affecting systems worldwide. Zoltán Tanács, Minister for Science and Technology, said the precautionary measure was introduced after two critical vulnerabilities were discovered in PHP, a programming language widely used to run websites. Online administration through magyarorszag.hu is expected to remain unavailable for around 48 hours.

Why has Hungary’s government portal been taken offline?

In a Facebook post on Thursday, Zoltán Tanács announced that access to magyarorszag.hu and several other government websites had been temporarily suspended overnight due to an international cybersecurity risk.

The threat is linked to a vulnerability known as PHP2Shell. PHP is one of the world’s most widely used programming languages, powering a significant number of websites and online services. Security experts have identified two serious flaws that could allow attackers to execute programmes remotely on vulnerable servers, potentially without needing a password.

“We have found no signs of an attack, but administration through the portal is expected to be suspended for around 48 hours until the vulnerability is fixed,” the minister wrote.

He stressed that the decision was taken as a precaution to protect citizens’ data and ensure the safe operation of Hungary’s digital government services. At the time of writing this article, magyarorszag.hu was unavailable.

Millions of servers could be at risk

Hungary’s National Cyber Security Institute issued a critical alert on 21 October, assigning the vulnerabilities a severity score of 9.2. The institute urged system operators to install the available security patches immediately.

Where an immediate update is not possible, experts recommend temporarily disconnecting affected systems from the internet or shutting them down if necessary.

Exploiting the vulnerabilities could allow attackers to run malicious code on servers, access sensitive information, or modify and delete website content. As PHP is used extensively around the world, the flaws could potentially put millions of servers at risk.

PHP developers have already released security fixes, but website operators must install them to protect their systems. Experts have also warned that updating a WordPress website alone may not be enough: the PHP version running on the underlying server must also be checked and updated where necessary.

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Other European countries have also suspended services

Hungary is not the only country to have taken precautionary action. According to Tanács, several European countries have temporarily restricted access to government websites and public services in response to the same threat.

  • The Netherlands: Authorities reportedly took several systems offline, including government services, online systems associated with the Port of Rotterdam, hospital websites, websites belonging to major political parties and the national cybersecurity centre’s own website.
  • Finland: Several government online services were temporarily suspended.
  • Denmark: A nationwide system used for communication between schools and parents was taken offline.
  • France: The Interior Ministry temporarily shut down certain websites operated by local administrative authorities.

Some services operated by Wikipedia and the BBC were also reportedly affected.

The shutdowns were precautionary measures, and there were no confirmed reports that the affected government systems had been compromised. However, cybersecurity company Cloudflare detected attempts to exploit the vulnerabilities even before the security patches were released.

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Artificial intelligence helped uncover the flaws

The vulnerabilities are particularly concerning because experts believe they may have been present in the affected software for more than a decade without being detected.

Wiz, a cybersecurity company owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet, was among the organisations involved in identifying the flaws. The company highlighted the role of artificial intelligence, describing the vulnerabilities as among the most serious security issues ever uncovered with the help of AI.

Tanács said advanced AI solutions had helped experts identify the long-hidden weaknesses. He also urged businesses to ask their IT and information security specialists to check whether their websites are affected and to implement the necessary fixes as soon as possible.