In simplest terms, RCE allows someone to run code on your machine remotely, and without your permission. An estimated 70 percent of websites across the internet rely on PHP. This is why the United States’ National Security Agency and the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre suggested that websites go dark until the vulnerabilities are patched.

The language that’s known as the backbone of the internet is now subject to what experts are calling the one of the most notable vulnerabilities in recent memory.

The web is a bit of a hot mess today following the discovery of two severe vulnerabilities.

Lorrie Cranor, a professor in security and privacy technologies at Carnegie Mellon University’s CyLab, said that if you are a user on an impacted site, “The companies involved should let people know if their data were actually exposed, but it may take some time.”

Dozens of UK government services have been taken offline after a cyber incident triggered a global shutdown of websites.

A string of cyber-security incidents has caused websites to go dark

The list of sites that had to go down, at least temporarily, because of the recently disclosed PHP vulnerability keeps growing. Thankfully, the Internet Archive’s ops team quickly got things patched,

Ondřej Surý was a relatively anonymous volunteer working on PHP security. Then the internet exploded.