Seoul:South Korea's science ministry has elevated the nation's cyber crisis warning level in response to global security concerns stemming from critical vulnerabilities in PHP, a widely used programming language. The alert level has been raised to "caution," the second-lowest tier in the country's four-level system, as of noon on Thursday.

According to Yonhap News Agency, the science ministry instructed companies and government agencies to implement updates to patch their systems securely. Science Minister Bae Kyung-hoon emphasized the urgency, noting that exploit codes for the PHP flaws have been publicly released, posing potential threats to numerous websites.

The decision follows a surge in global responses, including website shutdowns by government agencies and companies, after the vulnerabilities were identified with the aid of artificial intelligence. Cybersecurity firm Wiz, whose researchers identified the issues, labeled them as some of the "most severe" vulnerabilities detected by AI to date.

PHP, or Hypertext Preprocessor, supports a multitude of platforms such as online shopping sites, Wikipedia, and WordPress. The flaw, discovered recently, could enable unauthorized attackers to take control of web servers, leading to significant cyberattacks like data breaches and website defacement. Developers of the PHP platform have issued patches, and the Korea Internet and Security Agency (KISA) has released a security update advisory.