Why is everyone talking about PHP’s ‘critical’ security flaws?

If you’re of a certain age, “PHP” may invoke memories of early web development in the 1990s. In the decades since, the scripting language has hummed along in the background, used by popular platforms like WordPress. But just this week, it suddenly got an enormous spotlight as the internet lit up with alarm over two high-risk vulnerabilities.

If you’re not a server administrator, you may be wondering what the danger really is. In fact, if the admins for the websites you use or run were quick enough, you may have not noticed a thing.

So what is PHP? And does it affect you? Here’s what you need to know.

What is PHP?

PHP is known as a general-purpose scripting language often used in web development. Run on a server, it allows websites to handle complex actions without having to embed instructions or content within pages. Examples of dynamically generated output include showing the current calendar date, HTML and PDFs, and even JSON and XML files for caching purposes.