Global Security Breach — dresden.de Taken Offline

Following the discovery of a new global security vulnerability, the city of Dresden has taken the precautionary measure of taking its website offline. The website and all other city-run sites will remain unavailable until Thursday, according to a statement from the city. Appointments that have already been scheduled will take place as planned. City offices and agencies remain reachable via email and phone.

Security Vulnerability in the PHP Programming Language

The issue stems from a serious security vulnerability that is undermining the foundation of numerous websites and online services worldwide. The widely used programming language PHP, on which a large part of the entire internet is based, is affected. The websites of Saxony’s state capital also use it.

As reported by, among others, the IT security firm Huntress, the Federal Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT), and the official PHP security team, this is an acute emergency situation. Criminals can exploit the vulnerability to remotely execute their own malicious code on the affected servers.

In practice, this allows attackers to take complete control of a website, access sensitive customer data, or misuse the infrastructure for further cyberattacks.

City Aims to Prevent Compromise by Shutting Down Sites

To prevent such a compromise, the state capital announced that it had taken the websites offline. According to the statement, the necessary security update is already being installed. Once the vulnerability is patched, the websites are expected to be accessible again—likely on Thursday.