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.…