PHP panic 😱

Attacks began before the patch to a pair of critical bugs shipped, with governments in Finland, the Netherlands and France pulling websites offline as a precaution.

Stephen Graves
October 21, 2026

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📝 What you need to know

Two critical bugs in PHP, the programming language behind about 70% of websites whose server-side language is known, let attackers take over servers without logging in.

PHP shipped fixes on Wednesday after details leaked early, but Cloudflare reported attacks hours before the patch landed, and Finland, the Netherlands and France took government websites offline as a precaution.

For crypto users, the danger lies in a compromised site serving a fake page that drains connected wallets, the same trick used in DNS hijacks against Compound, Celer and Curve. There’s little to nothing that users can do, though, with responsibility for the fix falling on website owners and hosting companies. That could take a while, with about 884,000 servers still advertising PHP 8.1 or older.

PHP Panic: Two Critical Bugs Put 70% of the Internet at Risk, and Everyone Is Freaking Out

Two critical bugs in PHP, the language running most of the web, let strangers take over servers without a password.

From our partner

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Bitcoin (BTC)

October 21, 2026

$84,518

▲ 1.5% (24h)

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📊 Myriad Insight of the Day

Myriad prediction market

October 21, 2026

Solana's next move: Pump to $160 or dump to $40?

Resolves when SOL hits either target first

$160 55%

$40 45%

Why it matters

Solana completed its biggest consensus upgrade since launch, but the market has barely budged. Alpenglow went live Wednesday, cutting transaction finality from about 12.8 seconds to roughly 150 milliseconds. Yet SOL sits near $108, about where it was in late August, when this market was a coin flip. Traders now give the pump to $160 55% odds; it would take a 48% rally, versus a 63% drop to $40.

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