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News feeds and inboxes have been bulging with information about a major PHP security issue this morning, after several websites chose to go offline yesterday. In case you missed it, you can read more here: https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/news/critical-security-issue-affecting-php
All our servers were patched yesterday to the latest versions of PHP – the script language that many websites rely on.
This follows notable security alerts with two common WordPress plugins earlier this week – UpdraftPlus, a popular backup service, and SEO plugin RankMath.
We’ve always considered security should come as standard, not an optional extra. We don’t charge for SSL certificates, daily backups, malware monitoring, or any of the additional layers of security built in to our hosting platform. All WordPress sites that we manage have CloudHost Protect security and spam protection in place and where we’ve inherited a site with unsupported code, we apply further patches and protection to mitigate possible risk.
We’re not going to say “everything’s perfectly ok” – new vulnerabilities and risks are detected daily – but we have done everything we can to ensure the smooth running of the sites we’ve been trusted with.
If you have a website that uses PHP, please do check that your server is running the latest patched versions, which are:
- 8.5.12
- 8.4.27
- 8.3.36
- 8.2.35
You may see the version simply referenced as 8.5, 8.4, 8.3 or 8.2 without the sub-version showing, but it is that third number that is key to knowing if you have the latest version. Some providers have manually applied changes to the current verison on their servers though, so the number alone doesn’t necessarily mean you are at risk. We also look after a number of sites for partners that are hosted elsewhere and had several panic messages about Krystal Hosting showing an old version – don’t worry, they applied the fixes manually for now.
One thing to note though, version 8.1 and earlier are no longer supported and sites relying on those should look to update as a matter of urgency in most cases.
We do have a few sites on an older version due to compatibility issues. We have manually pushed additional code changes to these and will be contacting the site owners directly to look at longer-term options.
If you have any questions or concerns please feel free to contact us.
