SoftBank has suspended delivery of emergency earthquake alerts and other warnings to users of its mobile phone service until Oct 26, the carrier announced. The stop follows the discovery of a critical vulnerability in PHP, a programming language used to build web services.
Emergency earthquake alerts — known in Japan as kinkyu jishin sokuho — are pushed automatically to phones and can give users seconds of warning before strong shaking arrives. The service is a standard feature on handsets sold in Japan, and many residents rely on it as their first notice of a quake.
The suspension covers SoftBank's own mobile subscribers. The announcement did not say how many users are affected or which other alerts are included in the halt.
The PHP flaw has prompted other institutions to act. The health ministry shut down 31 of its systems, and no information leak has been confirmed, NHK reported.
The same vulnerability was linked to unauthorized access to servers handling GMO's foreign exchange trading, where users have reported unauthorized account activity.