Is Your Website Safe or Still at Risk? What You Need to Know About the Recently Discovered PHP Vulnerability

Last week, you may have seen headlines about a serious security vulnerability affecting PHP, the programming language that powers nearly 70% of websites. If you have a WordPress website, it relies on PHP to function.

Two high-impact vulnerabilities, collectively dubbed “PHP2Shell,” could allow attackers to gain access to a website’s underlying systems, steal sensitive information, and establish backdoors for future access.

Discovered with the help of AI and announced on October 20, these vulnerabilities highlight the importance of keeping website software up to date. Protecting your website requires security patches to be installed on the servers where it’s hosted, along with ensuring your website runs a secure, patched version of PHP. For example, PHP 8.3 users should be running version 8.3.36 or later.

If you haven’t checked your website to confirm that the security patch has been installed, it’s imperative to confirm that you are running a safe version. You can find more information on safe versions of PHP at: https://www.php.net/archive/2026.php#2026-10-21-5

Monitoring software vulnerabilities and helping keep our clients’ websites safe, secure, and up to date is just one of the ways the Saltworks technical team supports our clients.

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