# The Vulnerability Apocalypse and Why We Should Fund Open Source

- Type: News
- Source: Electronic Frontier Foundation
- Date: 2026-10-23
- Original: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/10/vulnerability-apocalypse-and-why-we-should-fund-open-source
- Canonical: https://overview.legal/posts/604056
- Topics: Social Media

## Summary

If you use the internet at all, you may have noticed that a large percentage of sites suddenly went down earlier this week—and all your nerdiest friends were talking about "The Vulnerability Apocalypse” and this thing called PHP that powers nearly 70% of the websites on the internet. You may find yourself wondering: what is PHP, what just happened, what is the vulnerability apocalypse, and what do I need to do? To find out what you can personally do read the first blog post in this series! What

## Full text

If you use the internet at all, you may have noticed that a large percentage of sites suddenly went down earlier this week—and all your nerdiest friends were talking about "The Vulnerability Apocalypse” and this thing called PHP that powers nearly 70% of the websites on the internet. You may find yourself wondering: what is PHP, what just happened, what is the vulnerability apocalypse, and what do I need to do? To find out what you can personally do read the first blog post in this series! What Is PHP? PHP is a programming language used mainly to create interactive websites. Facebook, Wordpress, Wikipedia, Etsy, and other major sites all use or were originally built on PHP. It is a long-established mainstay of web development. But because it is open-source, maintenance of these critical systems depends on a small number of volunteers working on this in their free time. The disaster scenario that happened this past week is the perfect example of why we need more money and people support

---
Generated by overview.legal · https://overview.legal/posts/604056 · 2026-10-26
