Mathematics Genealogy Project Temporarily Offline

Critical PHP Vulnerability

The Mathematics Genealogy Project website runs on PHP, which on 20 October 2026 announced a critical vulnerability. Details are forthcoming, but preliminary reports indicate that all versions of PHP from 5.4 on are impacted. This vulnerability is one of the most severe ever reported, and widespread guidance has been that it may be prudent to completely take PHP-based web servers offline until the vulnerability can be patched.

Impact on MGP

To protect our data and server infrastructure, we have disabled all PHP-based functionality of the MGP site and are posting this page as an interim measure. You are likely to see many websites impacted on 21 October 2026, as the patch is released by PHP and deployed to active installs. We anticipate that our outage may take several days or longer to resolve.

Community Support Required

MGP relies on donations to fund most of our operations. We receive a modest annual financial gift from the American Mathematical Society as well as gifts in kind from AMS and our home institution, North Dakota State University, but we rely on donations from the mathematical community to pay the vast majority of our operating budget, most of which goes to pay our data managers. We currently face two large financial challenges:

• Our backend infrastructure is need of professional overhaul, which we project will cost more than half of our typical annual operating budget. We have weathered multiple cyberattacks in the last couple of years, but with the rise of AI agents that are unconstrained from bad actions, we must completely audit our server to have a robust online presence for years to come.
• We have a data backlog of nearly a year, which will require additional funding to pay additional data managers. Our data management interface is offline as part of this outage, so we are not able to work on catching up at the moment either.

If you value the work of the MGP and are in a position to help support us financially, we ask that you donate securely online through North Dakota State University. Even small contributions, if made by enough supporters of MGP, will help get us back on track.