Microsoft boss Satya Nadella says he has not seen anything like the PHP emergency "in a long, long time". Referencing the ongoing global efforts to fix the critical cyber-security flaw in millions of websites, he told a conference "it was a long day and a long night, I know, for all the IT and security folks". Other IT and cyber experts have told the BBC about their struggles in the last 48 hours, whose stories give us an insight into what it is like at the coalface of a major cyber emergency.
But also highlight how misinformation and panic has made things a lot worse. "It's been relentless," says UK-based system administrator Adam Mudd. He said he had never had so many messages from people who were worried about their websites.
"The biggest challenge has been juggling clients who want their sites taken offline as a precaution, while trying to coordinate updates and fixes across countless different setups," he said. "Sometimes it takes me longer to take a website down than to fix the PHP problem." PHP is a very popular programming language which powers millions of websites. But two critical flaws were found with the system that led to the emergency response, with national cyber-security authorities urging IT teams to download a security fix urgently or take websites and servers offline.
Mudd says since then he has been under enormous pressure and has lost a huge amount of sleep - working early and not finishing until to secure his customers' systems. In Mauritius, IT administrator Loganaden Velvindron said he too was flat out since his team realised just how much software relies on PHP. "Many versions of php running are completely end-of-life, so we are having to rebuilding web apps and change code in some cases," he said.
He said part of the problem was the announcement about the security vulnerabilities in PHP came as a surprise, without much time to prepare for action. Jon Jones, Technical director for a digital advertising company, was also spurred into action by the alerts. "Seeing the warning drop was definitely eye-opening and a new experience we've not dealt with before," he said.
"But, in a way, it was exciting feeling like a bit of a Hollywood action scene." The PHP Foundation, which manages the programming language, released its software fix and there was a scramble for people to download it. Jones said it felt like "the race was on" when the patch launched at on Wednesday. "It was also a bit nerve-racking as anyone who has applied software updates before would know, there's always a chance than an update can cause other issues," he said.
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