Stock markets register falls with cybersecurity problems in the background

BarcelonaCybersecurity is once again in the spotlight in the markets. Stock exchanges began this Thursday's session with panels dyed red. The Ibex-35, the main benchmark of the Spanish stock market, is down more than 300 points, between 1.5% and 1.7% at the start of the day, and the rest of the European trading floors are also falling with investors focused on corporate earnings, and especially on the global alarm caused by two critical vulnerabilities in PHP, one of the most used programming languages for the operation of web pages and applications.

In Spain, Bankinter's quarterly results have not brought calm to investors either, falling by more than 4% and dragging down the rest of the banking sector. In any case, the downward trend affects most stocks.

For their part, Wall Street futures –the North American markets open at 2 p.m. Catalonia time– also anticipate significant losses, both in the Dow Jones index and in the Nasdaq, where technology companies have significant weight. The two detected vulnerabilities that have generated nervousness, known collectively as PHP2Shell, could allow attackers to execute malicious code remotely on affected servers and potentially access files, databases, and other sensitive information.

As a result of the problem, security agencies and governments of different countries have issued urgent warnings, while major technology companies such as Google, OpenAI, Amazon, and Cloudflare are working to identify vulnerable systems, detect possible attacks, and apply protection measures.