Last night, at about half six, I'd finished work for the day and was settling in for an hour or two on a new side project (a heads-up display for keeping track of the twenty or so agent sessions I seem to run these days, but that's a post for another time). My phone went. A friend, a fellow Scout leader and a DevOps sort, had forwarded me an email he'd just had from the Scouts. The UK's National Cyber Security Centre had put out guidance about a critical flaw affecting some websites, and the Scouts were asking every volunteer who looks after a group, district or county website to check whether it runs PHP and, if it does, to patch it or take it down.

Underneath, he'd written: "I think this is time for thephpboyscout to shine 🙂"

I laughed, told him that, looking at the news, smarter minds than mine had already fixed it, and went back to my side project. A second friend sent me The Register's write-up a little later and I didn't even open it.…