Internet Archive down, Wikipedia hit by outages amid PHP issues
The Internet Archive went offline and thousands of Wikipedia users reported access problems on Wednesday, October 21, as the Wikimedia Foundation said it was addressing newly discovered security vulnerabilities in PHP.
The foundation, which operates Wikipedia, told Mashable that the Wikipedia disruption was related to the vulnerabilities. It said several systems had been taken offline as a precaution while security patches were being applied.
The explanation appeared in update at 12:03 p.m. Eastern Time, offering the first clear indication in the reports of what was behind Wikipedia’s problems.
“The Wikimedia Foundation is currently in the process of addressing security vulnerabilities in PHP, the programming language that underpins most wikis, including the Wikimedia projects,” a spokesperson told the outlet.
The spokesperson said the issue affected all known PHP versions and extended beyond Wikimedia. Foundation-supported and volunteer-run systems using the language were affected, with a number of other systems taken down until they could be safely patched.
Wikimedia’s status page also listed an unresolved incident described as “Emergency Maintenance,” according to Mashable.
Wikipedia outage reports began climbing sharply around 10:51 a.m. Eastern Time, TechRadar reported, citing Downdetector. Complaints in the United States exceeded 3,000, with reports also rising in the United Kingdom.
Some users encountered an error displaying the code “a607b0e,” according to Hindustan Times. However, access was not disrupted for everyone.
The Internet Archive, meanwhile, confirmed its own outage in a post on X.
https://t.co/DlpBfnRxqP is currently offline. We are working to restore service now.
— Internet Archive (@internetarchive) October 21, 2026
“Archive.org is currently offline. We are working to restore service now,” the organization said. It did not provide a cause or an estimated restoration time in that statement.
Mashable’s reporters encountered a connection timeout when trying to reach the Internet Archive website. The service hosts the Wayback Machine, which allows people to view saved versions of webpages and explore how websites looked in the past.
Although both services experienced problems during the same morning, a connection between the disruptions remained unconfirmed. Wikimedia’s explanation linked its own disruption to PHP security issues, but the Internet Archive had not attributed its outage to those vulnerabilities in the statement cited.
