In our brave new tech world, there’s nothing to fear but . . . everything.
In our brave new tech world, there’s nothing to fear but . . . everything.
T he news headlines last week had two words you just hate to see: “Banks scramble.” It’s never good when banks scramble. They’re reacting to bad news, or shoring up positions, or just cobbling together press releases assuring everyone that everything is fine. “Banks scramble” is almost as bad as “the fundamentals of the economy are solid,” which is usually a sign to bury the gold and dig up the guns.
Why were they scrambling? Because there was a big internet security problem. Something with PhP, whatever that is? Faked certificates? AES-256 codes cracked by AI in brute-force attacks that exploited a back door and exposed everyone’s bank passcodes? Something like that? Oh heck, don’t listen to me, I don’t know what I’m talking about. Let’s go to a trusted source, Amazon’s security blog:
Amazon Threat Intelligence identified a PHP2Shell exploitation attempt dating to Oct. 17, 2026, in MadPot telemetry, four days before public disclosure of CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619.
Oh well, when you put it like that. I was worried the other day about CVE-2026-109617, but it turns out CVE-2026-109618 was the thing we had to worry about, MadPot-wise.
In other words, I know nothing about what was going on, except that people who do know something were having hair-on-fire moments about an existential attack on the internet that exploited every possible security protocol, sent rogue bots romping through bank accounts, and reprogrammed internet-connected garage door openers to enter KILL MODE and slam down on hapless homeowners, severing their spines. One sober account on X compiled a long list of breaches and events, each of which would have been the worst thing to happen in a year, and concluded with a list of things you can do to be safe, like enabling two-factor identification on your bank accounts, making sure your phone number was locked down, and also, you might want to buy some bottled water and have cash on hand. Seriously. Apparently, in the modern era, we go from “banks scramble” to “water purification system shut down” in 48 hours.
This is like being told you should make sure your doors are locked before you go to sleep as a normal sensible precaution, but also hang some garlic and keep some sharpened stakes on hand.
Uh, why?
Oh, just being doubly cautious!
Yes but those are vampire-related things. Are there vampires about?
No one is reporting vampires, although the attacks did stop when white-hat hackers started texting cross emojis. Anyway, remember, your bank will never text you asking for a password. If they do, hold the phone up to a mirror, and if the message does not have a reflection, it’s a scammer.
You mean a vampire.
Well, let’s just say a scampire.
It was all very disconcerting, partly because it was so indistinct and so specific, and it revealed that we’re all at the mercies of forces that are suddenly super-powerful. It’s like hearing stories about how dogs might turn super-smart if the earth passes through a comet’s tail that possesses certain canine-enhancing properties, and you think “well, that’s a bit of hyperbole, no?” And then you hear we’re going through a comet’s tail, and you think “read something about that. All the weird dog-comet-interaction boffins are corking off on the socials, ha ha” and then you wake and the dog is at your computer transferring your investments to the Cayman Islands.
This will all blow over, and we won’t hear how close we came to disaster, and then it’ll happen again, you suspect. The darkly amusing part, on a personal level: I just tried to upload my daily content to my own website, and all of a sudden! Surprise! My password doesn’t work! I have emailed technical support, and expect a reply shortly:
Servers compromised
Vampire Dogs
Perimeter Failing
Run
It’ll probably be better tomorrow. Until, one day, it isn’t.