The set of vulnerabilities is dubbed PHP2Shell and disclosure is scheduled for 14:00 UTC with attacks expected to follow soon after.
It is adviced to take offline every non-vital services until the patch has been installed (or the Docker image has been updated with a patched version of PHP)
Update: fix is out https://www.php.net/archive/2026.php#2026-10-21-5
Services are only exposed on local WiFi and behind Tailscale, updated all as soon as possible: still quite safe right?
Think of Louisiana before Katrina. Those systems of pumps and dykes are expensive and had been neglected… which was fine right up until they were severely tested by Katrina.
Our orange city counselman stopped funding repairs and inspections on the dykes and pumps many years ago (when he destroyed CISA). They’ve been deteriorating from neglect ever since.
A large hurricane is going to hit at 14:00 UTC
(In 10 minutes)
It’ll almost certainly be handled quietly and nobody will know but system admins, but this could be a bigger thing than usual.
laughs in keeping an old archive site still in PHP5
“I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of Wordpress sites suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.”
Seriously though, how quickly do you expect patches to be available for WordPress? I’ve got one WordPress site that I made years ago for a friend’s business. I pop in on it and update stuff every few months.
Should I take it down?
it’s PHP that needs the patches. Yes you should take the site down until PHP has been patched.
edit: assuming you are hosting wordpress yourself. if you’re using a large 3rd party service that manages PHP itself like wordpress themselves, one should hope that they will be updating PHP early, before the patch is even released publicly.
Yeah it’s self hosted, thanks
it’s a lot more than wordpress…
Why do it this way? I’m genuinely unaware.
With the plex2shell, they fixed it in a previous update, then told us later.
If PHP knows what the problem is, why announce it now, and then release the patch. Why not release the patch, say hey guys this is an important one, and then tell the world/every script kiddie who didn’t know about php2shell AFTER everyone is patched?
Like I get it, I guess, php2shell must already be happening, the vulnerability is already there, but like… Shut up about it? Right? Let more people patch before you announce why the patch exists?
I’m new to this world so maybe this is normal?
Plex is a closed source software, so it’s easier to just push an update and tell about this later. PHP is open source, so if they release a patch for it, you can immediately look up in the source code and find out what has been fixed and kind of reverse engineer what the problem could be.
As this is a very high-class vulnerability, I assume that it’s very easy to get into this so if you see the patch, it’s probably trivial to just find out what the issue is and immediately start attacking everyone. With this, at least most admins are ready and can plan in that on this time they should check into the issue and patch asap.
Ah that makes more sense, that’s the key I was missing, thank you
Using a tool like Shodan, I can quickly get a list of addresses that have a specific version of PHP behind it.
It sounds like this is a cvss 9.0 or higher for PHP which is bonkers because PHP is such a huge amount of the internet.
My guess is releasing these CVEs the normal way could have catastrophic consequences. They’re giving stsadmins a heads up so there is less of a scramble when sysadmins read “hey fix your shit it’s totally vulnerable” before they have their coffee.
Like as a sysadmin, this is a great way for them to do this.
I will in 10 mins alert my team that the whole site has to come offline for a period today. I don’t need to take it offline in an emergency and tell my boss to send out a memo.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters CA (SSL) Certificate Authority Plex Brand of media server package VPS Virtual Private Server (opposed to shared hosting)
3 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 10 acronyms.
[Thread #142 for this comm, first seen 21st Oct 2026, 12:40] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
It’s just one thing after another. I already had to make sure every computer and VPS has the updated CA certificates earlier today. Now I just finished disabling all of my web servers. I hope Debian doesn’t take forever getting the patch out.
They took just a few hours to squeeze out a new ca-certificates. On the other hand the last time there was a huge kernel bug it took well over 24 hours I think…
They took a lot longer than that on some past vulnerabilities, some of them sat unpatched for weeks or months. But it depends on the severity. A remote exploit of severity 9 will probably get expedited.
A bad ca is update a file on every pc and application. A kernal bug is way more involved so it doesn’t make a new problem later.
Shouldn’t especially vital services be taken down to secure them?
takes down 112 / 911 services
Don’t worry guys, we’re safe now! ꒰ঌ(˶ˆᗜˆ˵)໒꒱
Safe here, we use 999
round these parts we use 0118 999 881 999 119 725 3
0118 999 881 999 119 725 3
We’re YOUR emergency services
As if those are running anything as recent as php.
For their interactive mapview in the control room they probably do.
Yep. Except if taking them down will kill people.
The great hardening continues. Good to see.
The
beatingscyberattacks will continue untilmoralesecurity improves
Synology had a critical system and PHP package update yesterday, could it be related 🤔
No, there is no fix released for this PHP vulnerability
Wouldn’t be surprised if the big guys got first dibs before everyone else
@Guiorgy @shadowtofu That’s not how embargoes work. If “the big guys” release, everybody releases. There have clearly been leaks, but afaik no patches made public yet.
Dibs on the patches? They are not finite.
Commercial patching and the sla’s are huge business. You do know how rhel works right?
