From zdnet.com
Details remain foggy about a recent security breach at the PHP PEAR website, a crucial, but lesser-known part of the PHP ecosystem.
PEAR, which stands for “PHP Extension and Application Repository,” is the first package manager that was developed for the PHP scripting language back in the 1990s, and works by allowing developers to load and reuse code for common functions delivered as PHP libraries.
While currently most PHP developers have switched to using Composer, a newer third-party package manager, PEAR still remains very popular and is still very widespread because it’s also been included by default with all official PHP binaries for Linux.