Jason Nickerson — Hosting Industry InsiderTwo decades
inside the web
as it kept rewriting
itself.
I’m Jason, a hosting industry insider with experience across open-source CMS platforms, control panels, cloud infrastructure, and the events that bring the industry together. Today, I focus on building partnerships, programming industry summits, and documenting what is happening across the hosting ecosystem.
- Sep 19, 2026
Patch First, Debrief Later: The Reality of 7.1.1
WordPress 7.1.1 is out with 11 security fixes and nearly 40 bug patches. If you haven't checked your dashboard yet, now is the time to verify those auto-updates actually ran.
Read article: Patch First, Debrief Later: The Reality of 7.1.1→ - Sep 18, 2026
Data Centers Are Just AI Factories Now
Crusoe's massive new funding round proves that the old guard of web hosting and the new giants of AI infrastructure are now playing entirely different games.
Read article: Data Centers Are Just AI Factories Now→ - Sep 18, 2026
Root Access is Never a Gift: The Acronis Plugin Patch
A privilege-escalation vulnerability in the Acronis cPanel plugin reminds us that even our security tools can become the primary vector for a server compromise if permissions aren't tight.
Read article: Root Access is Never a Gift: The Acronis Plugin Patch→
The early 2000s were the good years for tinkerers. Open-source CMS platforms were the closest thing we had to a universal starter kit, and PHP-Nuke and osCommerce were how you learned to ship real projects on the open web. I went deep on Joomla for the better part of a decade, contributing code to the project, organizing its community around releases and events, and eventually crossing over into the WordPress orbit that quietly swallowed everything in its path.
From there the story is a tour of the hosting stack: cPanel and the control-panel era that defined shared hosting, the managed cloud wave at Cloudways and DigitalOcean, and the publishing side at webhosting.today. Day to day now I'm at JetBackup, working on backup and disaster recovery and helping hosts protect the infrastructure that keeps everything running. I also program the seasonal industry summits, Atlas Digital Summit and Domain Days Dubai, where the hosting community gathers to set the agenda for what comes next.
The through-line is community, the conferences, the hallway conversations, and the group chats where the industry actually decides what happens next. The technology changes; the people pointing it in the right direction stay the same.
Twenty-something years,
in reverse.
- 2026 – present
FounderAtlas Digital SummitPrivate gatherings for hosting leaders, AI infrastructure innovators, and the builders of the agentic web.
- 2026 – presentFounderConf64
The Conference Operating System for Business Development and Field Marketing Teams.
- 2026 – present
Co-FounderSuperDeployThe advanced migration engine for AI applications. Seamlessly transition your codebase to independent, production-grade infrastructure in minutes.
- 2025 – 2026Director of Business Developmentwebhosting.today
Contract · Business development and partnerships for the hosting publisher.
- 2024 – presentBusiness Development & Partnerships ManagerJetBackup
Backup and disaster recovery for the hosting ecosystem.
- 2023 – present
Chief Marketing Officer, Founding TeamDomain Days DubaiMENA’s domain and digital asset conference.
- 2021 – 2023Senior Manager, WordPress Business Unit → Lead Community Marketing Manager IICloudways / DigitalOcean
Full-time · WordPress community, field marketing, and sales enablement through the acquisition.
- 2019 – 2021Marketing ManagercPanel
Full-time · Event planner and marketing strategist for 500–3,000 attendee events and virtual series.
- 2017 – 2019FounderCMS Summit
The global CMS conference.
- 2007 – 2019CEO | FounderJoomlaxtc.com / Monev Software LLC
Premium Joomla templates and extensions. 101,000+ members.
- 2015 – 2019Board Member, Capital Team ChairJoomla! Project
Leadership, sponsorships, and partnerships for the open-source CMS.
- 2001 – 2005DeveloperPHP-Nuke · osCommerce era
First shipping code in the early open-source web.
Threat Briefing: Cisco ISE 0-Day, Acronis Hosting Plugin PrivEsc & WP Core Click2Shell
⚠️ CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE & HOSTING ALERTS
Cisco ISE Maximum-Severity Zero-Day — Active exploitation of Identity Services Engine (ISE) reported, allowing full system compromise [4].
- CVE / severity: Not disclosed in sources / Critical
- Affected versions: Cisco ISE (Specific versions not disclosed in sources)
- Fixed in: Contact vendor for emergency patches
- Action now: Monitor logs for unauthorized administrative access; restrict ISE management interfaces to trusted internal IPs only.
Acronis Backup Plugin Local Privilege Escalation — Incorrect default file permissions in Acronis hosting plugins allow local attackers to escalate privileges to root on Linux-based hosting nodes [12, 13].
- CVE / severity: CVE-2026-87886 / High
- Affected versions: Acronis Backup plugin for cPanel & WHM (Linux) and Plesk extension (All versions prior to current release)
- Fixed in: Acronis Backup for cPanel/Plesk (Update to latest version via provider)
- Action now:
- Run
/usr/local/cpanel/scripts/upcpor equivalent Plesk update commands immediately. - Verify file permissions on Acronis binary paths to ensure no world-writable bits are set.
- Run
Cisco FMC SQL Injection — A vulnerability in the Firepower Management Center (FMC) allows authenticated attackers to execute arbitrary SQL commands. Does not impact ASA/FTD software [11].
- CVE / severity: CVE-2026-20344 / High
- Affected versions: Cisco FMC (All versions prior to 7.2.5.1)
- Fixed in: Cisco FMC 7.2.5.1
- Action now: Upgrade FMC instances; implement strict egress filtering on management networks.
🛡️ WORDPRESS CORE & PLUGIN EXPLOITS
WordPress Core "Click2Shell" RCE Chain — A new unauthenticated vulnerability chain allows attackers to force an Admin's browser to execute PHP code via backend triggers [1].
- CVE / severity: No CVE assigned / Critical
- Affected versions: WordPress Core (versions not specified in source)
- Fixed in: Not disclosed in sources
- Action now: Audit active sessions for unauthorized Admin users; deploy WAF rules to block suspicious PHP execution patterns in the
/wp-admin/context.
OS Gallery SQLi and RCE — Multiple critical vulnerabilities in the OS Gallery plugin allow unauthenticated SQL injection and two distinct paths to RCE [7].
- CVE / severity: No CVE assigned / Critical
- Affected versions: OS Gallery < 6.2.7
- Fixed in: OS Gallery 6.2.7
- Action now: Update via
wp plugin update os-galleryor the WordPress dashboard immediately.
Import and Export Users SSRF — Failure to validate user-supplied URLs during CSV processing allows Server-Side Request Forgery [6].
- CVE / severity: CVE-2026-16542 / Medium-High
- Affected versions: Import and export users and customers < 2.4.5
- Fixed in: version 2.4.5
- Action now: Update plugin immediately; restrict the web server's ability to make outbound requests to internal metadata services (e.g., 169.254.169.254).
🔍 ADDITIONAL ACTIVE THREATS
- Meow Gallery Shortcode Injection: CVE-2026-92422 (CVSS not stated) affects versions < 5.5.5. Attacker-controlled values are concatenated into shortcodes without sanitization [2]. Update to 5.5.5.
- The Events Calendar RCE: Urgent active threats identified in versions through 6.17.4 [3]. Agencies should prioritize batch updates for all managed client sites.
- Jupyter Server Misuse: Infrastructure teams should monitor for unexpected binary downloads and process trees (e.g.,
wgetorcurlspawned by Jupyter) which indicate unauthorized crypto-mining or botnet activity [9].
On the
road.
Conferences, summits, and WordCamps I’ll be at in the months ahead.
- Aug 16 – 19, 2026
- Sep 28 – 29, 2026
- Domain Days DubaiRescheduled
New dates to be announced.
Oct 15 – 16, 2026 - Nov 11 – 12, 2026
- State of the WordDec 2026
- Mar 15 – 18, 2027
When the servers
go quiet.
A small digital label putting out industrial house, progressive house, and dubstep. A different kind of open protocol.
Twenty years of showing up for the projects, communities, and voices that keep the open web open.
A news portal covering the hosting and domain industry — and a running excuse to keep talking to the people who build it.