Erk, that’s scarily real.
Those phone hacking scammers are going to think their xmases all came early.
Well gee, that's re-assuring.
The UK government has advised every citizen to keep emergency supplies of water and long-life food, in order to improve the country's resilience in the face of increasing threats.
Ministers said households should aim to have enough basic supplies to last 72 hours - in case of extreme weather, technological breakdown - or the possibility of "state-sponsored terrorism" by Russia or other hostile powers targeting the UK's infrastructure.
Siftah retweeted
Philomena: Some people have been writing PHP for over 20 years. Is that because it's particularly difficult to finish?
Expert: No, software is constantly evolving.
Philomena: So they've been writing the same website for 20 years?
Expert: No, different projects.
Philomena: Have they tried finishing one before starting another?
Expert: That's not how software development works.
Philomena: My mate Paul spent 20 years building a shed. Turned out he was just an alcoholic.
Expert: Right.
Philomena: Is PHP like that?
The line “But every time we block network access, the warehouse stops printing shipping labels.” reminds me of $job-3, far too real 😂
Security called me at 6:12 AM today.
"Patch every PHP server immediately."
I asked what happened.
"Two critical vulnerabilities. Remote code execution. No authentication required."
Cool.
How many PHP servers do we have?
According to inventory: 12
According to reality:
Nobody knows.
We found one running WordPress.
Three running old internal tools.
One under someone's desk.
Two inside vendor appliances.
A forgotten employee directory from 2016.
And a server named:
PHP-OLD-DO-NOT-TOUCH
Naturally, that one runs payroll exports.
Then we found a PHP 5.6 box.
I asked who owned it.
The documentation said:
BRIAN.
Brian left in 2019.
We called Brian.
He said:
"Oh wow, that's still running?"
Excellent.
By 8 AM, leadership joined the incident call.
CEO:
"Can hackers actually get in?"
Security:
"Potentially yes."
CEO:
"Without a password?"
Security:
"Yes."
CEO:
"Then why do WE need passwords?"
Not the lesson.
Finance asked if we could wait until the weekend to patch because downtime affects revenue.
Security explained that the alternative was letting strangers execute code on our servers.
Finance asked for a cost comparison.
At 9:17, someone suggested temporarily taking the vulnerable websites offline.
Marketing refused.
"Our campaign is live."
So for the next hour, the company officially decided maintaining a landing page for 20% off webinar registration was more important than preventing remote server takeover.
We finally patched everything we could find.
Then our scanner discovered another PHP server.
Hostname:
TEMP-PHP-2014
Uptime:
4,512 days.
Nobody knows what it does.
Nobody owns it.
Nobody can shut it down.
But every time we block network access, the warehouse stops printing shipping labels.
Security has classified it as critical infrastructure.
It is running PHP 5.4.
The vulnerability has existed longer than half our employees.
The emergency patch took four hours.
Finding out what PHP actually runs took eleven.
The internet isn't held together with code.
It's held together with servers everyone is afraid to turn off.
Double whammy, sad times :(
Not just PHP. Node.js has also announced security releases for October 21, with HIGH-severity vulnerabilities affecting its 26.x, 24.x and 22.x release lines.
If you run either stack in production, keep an eye on official advisories and apply patches promptly.
Security maintenance doesn't stop at your application code. Your runtime matters too.
Node.js advisory: nodejs.org/en/blog/vulnerabi…
Ouch, it’s actually even worse than I originally understood, vulnerable versions going back to 5.x.
Hopefully nobodies still running those… right? 🙃
‼️ BREAKING - PHP releases emergency patches for two critical #PHP2Shell RCE flaws (CVSS 9.2) as early exploit attempts emerge.
The flaws can enable unauthenticated code execution and expose server memory.
👉 PATCH NOW (CVE-2026-109618, CVE-2026-109619)
Details ➜ thehackernews.com/2026/10/ph…
I’m feeling for everyone who’s week is about to get ruined by this.
😭
Imagine being such a man baby you’d risk the lives of millions, just to protect the bot farms that say nice things to stroke your ego 🤷🏼♂️
Musk is the biggest loser on the planet.
Breaking: Elon Musk ordered the Starlink slowdown that blindsided Ukraine on.wsj.com/4sgcpBv
100% this.
The inability of people to see this bigger picture is the biggest challenge facing us in Europe right now.
I don’t think Europeans fully appreciate what is happening to the European Union right now.
The EU is under an extraordinary, multi-front assault, both from outside and from within. And I struggle to think of another period in its history when so many powerful actors had an interest in weakening it simultaneously.
Russia has spent years waging hybrid warfare against Europe. Weaponised migration, sabotage, cyberattacks, coordinated disinformation campaigns, bot networks and political interference. The objective is clear: undermine trust in democratic institutions, deepen social divisions and weaken European unity.
China has different motivations, primarily economic and geopolitical. A fragmented Europe is easier to pressure, easier to negotiate with individually and less capable of defending its economic interests.
And then there is the United States. Perhaps the most disturbing development of all.
Under Trump and MAGA, a country that helped rebuild the old continent and then spent decades supporting European integration now has an administration openly hostile to much of what the EU represents. Its own National Security Strategy even calls for cultivating resistance to Europe’s current political direction.
Think about that for a moment.
Meanwhile, within Europe, parts of the far right and far left amplify these divisions, whether through ideological alignment, political opportunism or outright sympathy for authoritarian regimes.
This doesn’t mean Russia, China and MAGA are all following some jointly coordinated master plan. They don’t have to. Their interests increasingly overlap, and Europe’s internal divisions make their work considerably easier.
What makes this particularly alarming is what is actually at stake.
For all its flaws, the EU remains one of the world’s most consequential projects built around liberal democracy, the rule of law, individual freedoms and cooperation between nations.
At a time when authoritarianism is gaining ground and even longstanding democracies are showing disturbing tendencies, that matters enormously.
Europe is far from perfect. Its bureaucracy, indecision and inability to act decisively are real problems. But the answer cannot be to retreat into 27 competing nation-states, each too small to meaningfully influence a world increasingly dominated by continental powers.
Quite the opposite.
Europe needs deeper integration, stronger common institutions, genuine strategic autonomy and the political courage to defend its interests and values.
Because fragmentation is precisely what so many external actors want.
And perhaps that’s the central irony of our time: people are being deliberately manipulated into believing that the reverse is true — that national identity and sovereignty can only be protected by weakening European cooperation. In reality, a divided Europe is less sovereign, less secure and far easier for outside powers to pressure. Therefore the very thing that will make Europe stronger is the thing its adversaries are working hardest to prevent.
A united Europe is a geopolitical power. A divided Europe is a collection of countries waiting to be played against one another.






























