Japan Halts Digital Infrastructure at Banks and Airlines to Patch PHP Flaws

Japanese infrastructure—including major banks, airlines, and railways—preemptively took digital services offline on Thursday to patch newly revealed vulnerabilities in the PHP programming language. Affected organizations include Mizuho Financial Group, All Nippon Airways, East Japan Railway, and Seven-Eleven Japan, halting operations ranging from digital boarding passes to investment accounts. Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara confirmed that no attacks exploiting the PHP flaws have been detected so far. A recent survey of Tokyo Stock Exchange-listed companies revealed that 70% of respondents running PHP are utilizing out-of-date, unsupported software versions. The rapid shutdowns were partially driven by a severe domestic labor deficit, with Japan currently facing a shortage of approximately 110,000 cybersecurity workers. “Why does routine security maintenance require interrupting the business? When maintaining security becomes a threat to business continuity, the problem is much bigger than any individual vulnerability.” — Lisa Landau