The recent post about what people are using for webmail got me thinking about a perhaps irrational policy I have with my own self-hosted software: I don’t install anything written in PHP, because I have this vague notion that PHP software is often insecure. I think I probably got this idea because years ago I saw all the vulnerabilities in PHP webmail clients and PHP software like Wordpress and decided that it was the language’s fault—or at least a contributing factor.
Maybe this isn’t fair. Maybe PHP is just more accessible to new devs and so they’re more likely to gravitate to it and make security mistakes. Maybe my perception isn’t even accurate, and webmail / blog software written in other languages is just as bad—but PHP gets all the the negative attention because it’s so prevalent for web apps. Maybe my policy was a good idea, years ago, but now it’s just out of date.
To be clear, I’m not trying to stoke the flames of a language holy war here or anything. I’m honestly asking: Is it maybe time to revisit my anti-PHP policy? I’m looking longingly at some federated software like Pixelfed and wondering if maybe I’m just being a little too close-minded.
So I’m interested in your own experiences and polices here. Where do you draw the security line for what you will or won’t host, and what made you make that choice?
Is what you host publicly accesible? If not, then it’s not even a concern. You could even host unsafe apps, but if you know they are entirely inaccessible, it wouldn’t change a thing.
As for php itself, it’s mostly due to the fact it’s by far and wide overwhelmingly crushing the competition. A quick Google search says it’s used by about 80% of websites. So, it has, by far, the most (negative) publicity, biggest target, and most inexperienced/bad devs working on it. Software is as secure as its made. Junior dev don’t often think about security. It’s bigger, so it happens more often.
Yeah, publicly accessible in that it’d be reachable over HTTPS from the internet (and not behind a VPN), but password-protected. Thanks for weighing in on this!