If your favorite website is down, don’t panic. There’s a problem

Some of you may have discovered various websites, including some government ones, that seem to be non-functional as of today, Oct. 21.

The reason why is a serious vulnerability with PHP, a programming system that runs a great deal of the web. And one that seems is being actively exploited by certain persons.

There are fixes now available to deal with the problem but it is taking time to obtain the fixed software and install it so some sites have gone off-line completely temporarily, while others have removed acess to certain parts of their sites that might imploy the flawed code.

So just have patience. It will all sort out in a day or so.

Unknown's avatar

Author: grouchyfarmer

Yes, I'm a former farmer. Sort of. I'm also an amateur radio operator, amateur astronomer, gardener, maker of furniture, photographer.

7 thoughts on “If your favorite website is down, don’t panic. There’s a problem”

    1. Oh, there is indeed one almost every day, but most of them are as widespread or serious as this one is. This was for web sites that used the PHP programming language to power their interactions with users and other things and it was pretty bad. It was an old, old bug that apparently wen tback to 2004 and was first discovered now. I’m not sure what the problem was but it was serious enough that some government websites and others were shutting down completely until a fix was applied or some of the site’s functions didn’t work until it could be fixed.

      These systems are so complex these days, and so throughly interconnected and dependent on one another that all it takes is one glitch or one clever hack and to bring the whole system to its knees.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  3. This was widely reported on the BBC yesterday. We were out for most of the day until after 7pm, but my wife checked the online banking, and that seemed to be working okay. It appears that most websites that could be affected are now adding security patches, so it will hopefully be resolved.

    Best wishes, Pete.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. It looks like word got out quickly enough to enable most operations to do the upgrades before the proverbial “bad actors” could take advantage of the flaw. What’s kind of scary is that this problem has been in existence since 2004 and it wasn’t found until now. If the hacker community had found this first it could have been very bad.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

Leave a Reply