All the Easter Eggs in PHP

PHP used to pack quite a few Easter Eggs back in the day. Until PHP 5.5, calling a URL with a special string returned various bits of PHP information and images such as the PHP logo, credits, Zend Engine logo, and a quirky PHP Easter Egg logo.

• https://example.com/?=PHPE9568F36-D428-11d2-A769-00AA001ACF42: PHP Logo
• https://example.com/?=PHPB8B5F2A0-3C92-11d3-A3A9-4C7B08C10000: PHP Credits
• https://example.com/?=PHPE9568F35-D428-11d2-A769-00AA001ACF42: Zend Engine logo
• https://example.com/?=PHPE9568F34-D428-11d2-A769-00AA001ACF42: PHP Logo Easter Egg

In addition to the special URLs, Colin Viebrock made a change back in 2000 so that the standard PHP logo shown in the phpinfo() output changes to the Easter Egg logo only on April 1st.

Calling PHP web site URLs with query parameters above revealed a lot of information about the PHP version the sites were running, opening information disclosure vulnerabilities unless the sites were configured with expose_php=off PHP INI directive. There were hundreds of questions on StackOverflow and hundreds of blog posts and articles on turning off these URLs. The unexpected outcome of this was that attackers could target PHP web sites en-masse by snooping on the exact PHP version web sites use.

These magic URLs were removed in PHP 5.5 and those special URLs no longer have any special functionality. However, even to this date, PHP continues its last Easter Egg in its phpinfo() page.

In phpinfo() output, there is a special PHP logo visible only on April 1st.

phpinfo() pages reveal a lot of information about the PHP setup, and should not be visible outside visitors of a web site. The last of PHP Easter Eggs are placed in the Top right logo section of the phpinfo() HTML output.

Standard phpinfo PHP logo header
PHP Logo with an ElePHPant only on April 1st

The April 1st PHP logo shown above has not always been the same. Occasionally, PHP developers change the logo with a new fun and quirky logo.

Here are all the Easter Egg logos PHP had from the beginning:

Logo	PHP Version	Description
	PHP 4.0	Thies Arntzen
	PHP 4.3	Stig's dog named "Nadia"
	PHP 4.4	Zeev's dog named "Scotch"
	PHP 5.1
	PHP 5.3
	PHP 5.6
	PHP 7.0 to 7.4	Featuring a PHP 7 ElePHPant, by Andrea Faulds
	PHP 8.0 to current	Featuring InPHPinity, by Noriko Yamamoto