Last week was a terrible one for cybersecurity, and it’s likely to only get worse. This might seem like a topic for a technology magazine, not Crisis Magazine, but the breaking of the internet has ramifications for us all.

So what happened? A whole lot of things, actually. Probably the biggest vulnerability uncovered was a flaw in PHP, the programming language used by about 70% of all websites on the internet. I was a PHP programmer for almost 15 years, starting in 1997, but most people until last week had never heard of PHP (even a BBC cybersecurity “expert” hadn’t heard of it, which tells you how much expertise mainstream media “experts” actually have). One of the most popular website platforms is WordPress, which allows a person to easily design a website, and it is written almost entirely in PHP.

Last week, it was announced that a vulnerability existed in PHP that could allow a hacker to take control of the server upon which the site was hosted, and possibly to inject malicious code onto the computers of people visiting the site (i.e., you and me). It was a big deal, and cybersecurity experts were, to put it mildly, freaking out.

Worse still, the PHP vulnerability was just one of a number of major security vulnerabilities found in the past week or so, leading many pundits to warn that the internet itself is breaking (I guess I’m one of those pundits with this column).

What’s causing this rash of vulnerabilities? I think you already guessed: artificial intelligence. AI is allowing people to probe code in ways never before possible, and it’s finding bugs that have been in existence for years but never discovered before (the PHP vulnerability was more than a decade old). As a former software developer, I can tell you that all software has bugs; a developer just hopes the bugs aren’t serious enough to cause major problems. Sadly, we’re finding that hope is mostly unfounded.

Why does a coding flaw matter to Crisis readers? Because if you are reading this column, which only exists on the internet, then I can just about guarantee that your life is intricately tied to the internet. Your banking, your shopping, your work, your social connections—all reside either partly or entirely on the internet. Try to imagine just for a moment what would happen if the internet stopped working one day. It might seem like paradise at first (no texts from political campaigns!), but it would actually be a horrible nightmare, as we all depend greatly on a smoothly functioning internet to survive.

But here’s another aspect of these surfaced vulnerabilities that you might not have considered. The internet might not break, in the sense that it stops working, but your privacy on the internet—which is already tenuous—might disappear. All your financial transactions, all your private messages, all the sites you’ve visited: they might all become publicly available due to security vulnerabilities being exploited in this age of AI. As Catholics, we know that we will all be judged one day and that all we’ve done will be disclosed before the Great Judge (and everyone else), but that seems way down the road, and it will be in front of a Judge who is merciful. The world, however, is not merciful. So if you are engaged in behaviors online that you shouldn’t be engaged in—anything from the just mildly embarrassing to the horribly sinful—now’s a good reminder to stop.

Of course, even if your online conscience is completely clear, a breach can still wreck your finances or identity. So take this opportunity to review your personal online security procedures. Do you use two-factor authentication on all your important logins? You should (and if you don’t know what 2FA is, you need to learn now). Do you reuse passwords? You shouldn’t. Get a good password manager to track your passwords, and use its feature to create difficult and random passwords. Even if the internet’s security doesn’t completely break, it’s likely you have an account at a few sites that will be breached. Do what you can to minimize your exposure.

As I already noted, things are likely only going to get worse. AI has accelerated the pace of discovery, and many sites and backend programs are running on old code that’s never been vetted at the levels AI can achieve. I suspect that the next six months to a year will include a large number of major security vulnerabilities and breaches, and we should hope and pray none are dangerously disruptive (think power grid). But I also think a certain homeostasis will be achieved, in which using AI to protect and secure systems will match AI being used to break into them. But that won’t happen overnight.

Our Lord told his followers “Let your loins be girded and your lamps burning, and be like men who are waiting for their master to come home from the marriage feast, so that they may open to him at once when he comes and knocks…But know this, that if the householder had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would have been awake and would not have left his house to be broken into” (Luke 12:35-36, 39). This advice is primarily directed toward the spiritual life, but it’s good advice in our current age regarding general preparedness. Get your house in order, both in your soul and on the internet.

One final word of advice: be at peace. I follow a number of tech accounts on social media, which means my feed last week consisted of people freaking out and screaming that the sky is falling. Even if internet security continues to degrade, we Catholics don’t need to fear, for we have Christ and His Church. No bug, no matter how damaging, can change that.