Why half the internet was broken yesterday, the two issues

I posted this to my statewide librarian mailing list yesterday and I figured I’d share it out here now that my website is back up. Thank you, ibiblio, you are a great web host. I usually don’t give any unsolicited tech advice but I wanted to share some information about the two issues that, separately, each pose some security risks and are worth attending to. 1. “The PHP thing” This is a good explanation in the vulnerability which was discovered in PHP yesterday. PHP is a programming language which runs a lot of content management systems (WordPress and Drupal for example). It’s worth checking to see if you have it running on any server you may control. Here’s a very technical explanation. 2. “The number four thing” This is a vulnerability in some of the certificates which allow browsers and apps to be trusted. I heard it explained this way (Bluesky link for logged in folks) “imagine there was a password that if you guess it, you can impersonate any website on the internet, now…