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.
- Nov 2, 2026
OpenAI and the Reality of Shrinking Rounds
When the most talked-about AI company in the world scales back its funding goals, it is a clear signal that the era of the blank check might finally be closing.
Read article: OpenAI and the Reality of Shrinking Rounds→ - Nov 2, 2026
The Domain Tail Wagging the Hosting Dog
GoDaddy's Q3 2026 numbers are out, and the trend is clear: domains are keeping the lights on for the core business while hosting continues to lose its grip.
Read article: The Domain Tail Wagging the Hosting Dog→ - Oct 31, 2026
The High Price of Training God-Bots
Anthropic's potential 'junk' credit rating highlights the growing tension between massive AI compute costs and the harsh realities of public market balance sheets.
Read article: The High Price of Training God-Bots→
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: WordPress Update Race RCE, Linux Kernel Escalation & Brotli Risk
Infrastructure & Server-Layer Threats
Linux Kernel High-Severity Privilege Escalation — A public Proof-of-Concept (PoC) exploit has been released for the Linux Kernel bonding driver, allowing local users to gain elevated root privileges. [14]
- CVE / severity: CVE-2026-31419 (High)
- Affected versions: Linux Kernel versions utilizing the bonding driver (specific ranges not disclosed in sources) [14]
- Fixed in: Latest kernel security updates; check vendor-specific advisories [14]
- Action now:
- Run
yum update kernelorapt-get upgrade linux-image-genericimmediately. - Reboot servers to apply the new kernel.
- Run
Critical Brotli Compression Flaw Impacting Web Servers — Analysis of the Brotli vulnerability reveals significant risks for infrastructure teams using Brotli for assets or at the CDN/Load Balancer level. [7]
- CVE / severity: Not disclosed in sources (Brotli vulnerability)
- Affected versions: Servers/proxies with Brotli compression enabled (nginx, Apache, Cloudflare-like setups) [7]
- Fixed in: Not disclosed in sources [7]
- Action now:
- Review Brotli implementation in web server configs.
- Monitor for volumetric attacks targeting compression engines [6].
Lightsail/cPanel Kernel Risk — A specific warning has been issued for AWS Lightsail instances running cPanel/WHM regarding a recent kernel-level vulnerability. [9]
- CVE / severity: CVE-2026-98432
- Affected versions: Linux-based Lightsail instances, particularly those with cPanel & WHM installed [9]
- Fixed in: Vendor-specific patched kernels (refer to OS maintainer) [9]
- Action now:
- Verify kernel version on Lightsail instances.
- Apply OS-level patches via cPanel terminal or SSH [9].
WordPress & CMS Vulnerabilities
WordPress Core Update Race Condition RCE — Hackers have launched over 63,000 attacks targeting a race condition that occurs during the brief window while a WordPress site is updating itself. [3]
- CVE / severity: CVE-2026-87902 (Critical) [2]
- Affected versions: WordPress Core versions prior to 7.1.4 [3]
- Fixed in: WordPress 7.1.4 [3]
- Action now:
- Force update to WordPress 7.1.4 via
wp core update. - Monitor for unauthorized file inclusions or code execution during manual update windows [2].
- Force update to WordPress 7.1.4 via
BookIt Plugin SQL Injection — A critical flaw in the Liquid Web / StellarWP BookIt plugin allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary SQL commands. [4][5]
- CVE / severity: CVE-2026-62048 (Severity High/Critical) [5]
- Affected versions: BookIt plugin <= (latest version not specified in source) [4]
- Fixed in: Current version on WordPress repository [4]
- Action now:
- Run
wp plugin update bookitimmediately. - Scan database for unusual admin accounts or modified options tables.
- Run
Intelligence & Hosting Incidents
FBI Seizure of Virtualine Hosting — Law enforcement has seized the domain virtualine.net, a prominent "bulletproof" hosting provider used for money laundering and hosting illegal content. Infrastructure teams should check for any inbound traffic or peered connections with this ASN/provider. [7]
Active AI Scanning Surge — Real-time signals indicate a weekly surge in AI-driven active scanning targeting RCE flaws across hosting environments. Attacks are becoming faster at identifying unpatched versions of PHP and CMS core files. [10]
On the
road.
Conferences, summits, and WordCamps I’ll be at in the months ahead.
- 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.