PHP Issues Affect Websites Around the World – All the Latest Updates and What You Need to Know
What has really happened?
It’s important to note that despite widespread headlines so far, the PHP issue hasn’t resulted in any companies or websites being hacked… yet.
Instead, many organizations have been forced to remove individual pages or even entire websites to apply patches released by PHP to fix the issue, meaning users are unable to access certain resources.
So far, some government websites in Scotland and the Netherlands have been briefly offline, along with a Danish IT company that provides the country’s school communication platform.
Wikipedia and its content storage site Wikimedia also suffered some outages, but both appear to be back online now.
What is PHP?
PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor, or PHP, is among the most popular programming languages for websites and web applications in the world, so when you encounter zero-days of remote code execution, it’s a big deal.
In its most basic form, when a user clicks on a website, PHP gathers the information it needs and presents it in a way that can be read online.
PHP is not a new system: it has been around for decades, but as with many crucial code systems, it goes somewhat under the radar, meaning potential flaws or problems can go unnoticed for years.
News of the problem came to light yesterday, when PHP notified the security world about two critical vulnerabilities detected in its systems.
Flaws could expose countless sites to remote code execution (RCE) attacks, which could then lead to website takeovers, data theft, malicious redirects, and other equally sinister situations.
PHP then published a security advisory giving administrators a “heads up” about an incoming patch, as well as an “advance notice of an upcoming security release.”
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