The Heartbleed Bug is a serious vulnerability in the popular OpenSSL cryptographic software library. It lets a hacker access the memory of data servers. That means a user’s sensitive personal data — including usernames, passwords, and credit card information is potentially at risk of being intercepted.
SSL stands for Secure Socket Layer. it’s also known by its new name, Transport Layer Security, or TLS. OpenSSL is used to encrypt websites and user information across the Web. OpenSSL is an open project (meaning any programmer or coder can work on it) that was designed to prevent hackers from retrieving personal data submitted by users to a website (such as a banking, shopping, or digital content website).
Heartbleed is a bug discovered by Codenomicon, as well as Google employee Neel Mehta. The term “Heartbleed” was coined by Ossi Herrala, a systems administrator at Codenomicon. It’s got another technical name, CVE-2014-0160, named for the line of code that contained the bug.
With the greater exchange of data between clients, servers, and normal users, data extraction is possible from any of these three mediums. A malicious server can do as much damage as a hacker if the Heartbleed bug is left unchecked.
It lets a hacker access up to 64 kilobytes of server memory, but perform the attack over and over again to get lots of information. That means an attacker could get not just usernames and passwords, but also “cookie” data that Web servers and browsers use to track individuals and ease log-in.
LastPass, a company that makes password management software, and Qualys, a security firm have created testing sites to check which Web sites are vulnerable or safe. You can check the list of sites that were still vulnerable (as of April 11th afternoon ),according to researchers at Zmap
CNET is keeping a running list on the status of the top 100 Web sites, according to Alexa.com.
Sources: www.cnet.com, www.heartbleed.com, www.inferse.com, www.readwrite.com
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