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 15:00 BST 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.
The rush came as someone had leaked details of the PHP flaw early – and it was heavily rumoured that cyber-criminals were already trying to carry out attacks.
But cyber experts are also now questioning whether or not those rumours were real.
“We were flooded with rubbish intel about hackers being out there actively with working Proof of Concept (PoC) methods,” said UK cyber expert Daniel Card.
He said he also been flat out since Tuesday when the rumours of PHP hacks began circulating.
“This isn’t the first time we’ve had a situation like this but it feels like it’s been on another dimension,” he said.
He agreed that on paper the PHP vulnerabilities were very serious and should be taken seriously, but he and many others are frustrated with the misinformation about hackers being on the loose.
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