Policy & regulation
EFF: PHP Incident Sparks 'Vulnerability Apocalypse' Alarm, Renews Call to Fund Open Source
An EFF blog post says a large share of websites suddenly went down earlier this week in an incident tied to PHP, the language it says powers nearly 70% of websites, prompting talk of a 'vulnerability apocalypse.' The post argues the episode shows why the open source software underpinning the internet needs sustained funding.
A large percentage of websites suddenly went down earlier this week, setting off talk of a so-called "vulnerability apocalypse," according to a blog post from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).
The EFF post, titled "The Vulnerability Apocalypse and Why We Should Fund Open Source," says the incident centers on PHP, a programming language used mainly to create interactive websites. According to the EFF, PHP powers nearly 70% of the websites on the internet, which helps explain why the disruption was so widely felt. The post notes that major online properties, including Facebook, rely on the language.
For readers wondering what happened and what they need to do, the EFF points to the first installment in its blog series, which outlines steps individuals can take. The latest post explains the basics — what PHP is, what occurred this week, and what the "vulnerability apocalypse" means — before making its central argument: that the open source software underpinning much of the internet deserves serious, sustained funding.
The piece frames the outage as a policy problem as much as a technical one. Because so much of the web depends on open source components, the EFF argues, the health and security of that ecosystem is a matter of broad public concern, and underinvestment leaves widely used software — and the sites built on it — exposed to exactly this kind of disruption.
Details in this report come from the EFF's Deeplinks blog.
Source: EFF Updates
