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Technical Infrastructure Status

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RESOLVED
This announcement has been resolved, no further updates are expected.
PHP 5.2 - End of Life (Final Reminder)
We are sending this email to highlight the End of Life Support for PHP 5.2. As of January 31st 2014, PHP 5.2 will no longer be supported on our Shared and Reseller servers and will cease to function.

The information below details our plans on moving forward with removing 5.2.

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Overview
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* PHP 5.2 is being removed from our servers - it is now becoming a security risk and as a result we can no longer support this
* You need to ensure your sites are fully compatible with PHP 5.4 or 5.3 at minimum which will be the latest version
* If your site is not compatible with 5.3 it may break (it may be wise to check with any software developers if this is the case)
* We will no longer be supporting 5.2 on our servers
* Deadline is January 31st 2014.
* If you're unsure how this affects you, please talk to your web developer(s)

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Background
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Our servers have been running PHP 5.3 or 5.4 as the 'main version' for some time now. 5.3 at least has been installed for over 2 years, and both these versions receive regular security updates from the PHP team.

In the meantime, PHP 5.2 has not been updated since January 2011. This means that if any serious vulnerability was discovered in PHP 5.2, it would not be fixed by the makers of PHP. In this situation we would either be faced with extremely vulnerable servers, or have to upgrade immediately all servers to 5.3 or better.

Recently some more exploits have been released which could compromise PHP 5.2 and allow attackers to execute code on our servers. There is more (very technical!) information at:
http://www.securityblogger.net/2013/10/php-5xapache-remote-code-execution.html
- fortunately our servers are not susceptible to this particular attack, but it has brought into sharp focus just how much of a problem an exploit on PHP 5.2 would be.

Therefore we have decided to remove PHP 5.2 from our servers entirely, by the end of January 2014. This means anyone still using 5.2 will at least have some notice of the change. If a serious expoit for 5.2 was discovered tomorrow, there would be no notice - we would switch immediately to prevent damage to our servers. Sites would be broken until they were fixed for 5.3.

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Am I running PHP 5.2?
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We understand that some customers may be faced with the question of "am I running PHP 5.2?" and no longer have a developer at hand. If you are unsure which PHP version you are running, this information can be obtained from the top of a phpinfo file and we advise that you consult a developer if your site is currently running on the PHP 5.2 platform.

We have put together a step-by-step guide on how to create a phpinfo file to read your PHP version, this can be found in our knowledgebase here: https://www.clook.info/kb/442

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Moving forwards
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We intend to completely remove 5.2 at the end of January 2014, which will be over 2 years since we migrated the servers to run 5.3 as the primary version, and almost 3 years since PHP 5.2 was last updated. In the meantime, if any serious exploits are discovered, we may remove 5.2 without any prior notice.

If your web developers haven't contacted you about these changes (or indeed if you're a web developer who hasn't contacted your clients) we'd advise getting in touch ASAP.
Updated by Dan Miller on 11th Dec 2013 @ 16:12pm