In recent days there has been extensive news coverage about millions of attempts to hack into websites due to a serious cyber security flaw in the programming language that powers most of the internet.
The flaw is in PHP, the language most of the web runs on (it's being referred to as "php2shell").
As the editor and webmaster for Haddenham.net I wanted to let you know where things stand with this community website, so you don't have to wonder about the potential impact.
In short, the risk has been dealt with very promptly and effectively. This is because ...
- We were tracking this from the moment the PHP team announced the fix was coming, and had interim protections in place before the details became public.
- The official patch was released on Wednesday afternoon (21st October) and we applied it to the Haddenham.net server on the same day, within hours of it becoming available and verified.
- The update went on with no downtime – so Haddenham.net carried on as normal throughout.
- There is no sign that anyone attempted to exploit this against the Haddenham.net platform, and nothing users need to feel concerned about
The Haddenham.net set-up was already in the better-protected configuration for this particular flaw, and its server is kepts on a maintained, security-supported platform precisely so that fixes like this can be applied quickly and cleanly when they're needed.
If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to get in touch by email at: haddnham.net@hotmail.com
