Hong Kong watchdog warns of hacking risks from flaws in web programming language

A Hong Kong information security watchdog issued an “extremely high risk” warning on Thursday morning over two critical flaws in a widely used web programming language that could allow hackers to execute code remotely and take control of servers.

The warning followed similar alerts from governments and cybersecurity agencies overseas, which urged website operators to install updates to fix the vulnerabilities in the PHP programming language.

The Hong Kong Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Centre (HKCERT) said a remote attacker could exploit the vulnerabilities to execute code on a targeted system.