South African Presidency website taken offline as global cybersecurity threats persist

The Presidency announced the shutdown on Friday, October 23, 2026, saying the website would remain unavailable while protective measures were put in place.

It did not disclose the exact nature of the threat or give a timeline for restoring the site.

“Please be advised that The Presidency website is temporarily unavailable as a precautionary measure in response to a global cybersecurity event. We apologise for any inconvenience caused and appreciate your patience and understanding while this work is being completed,” the statement read.

Presidential spokesperson Vincent Magwenya told Reuters there was no indication of a security breach. He said the website had been taken offline as a precaution, adding that such warnings could affect normal website operations. 

The move comes two days after the PHP development team released emergency security updates to address two critical vulnerabilities that could allow attackers to run malicious code on affected servers without logging in.

Governments and businesses worldwide have rushed to secure systems running the PHP programming language after flaws were disclosed, forcing some services offline and triggering millions of hacking attempts in one of the most significant cybersecurity incidents in recent years.

PHP underpins a large share of the public web and is widely used by content management systems including WordPress, Drupal and Joomla, giving any critical vulnerability potentially widespread consequences.

PHP developers on Wednesday released fixes for the flaws and urged users to update affected systems immediately.