The Heartbleed Bug

April 14, 2014 • Blog, Business

Earlier last week the online world was shocked to learn of a major flaw existing inside established security systems that regulate our access to such things as our banking information and passwords. Dubbed, the Heartbleed bug it has forced many websites to issue fixes preventing it from happening and alerting customers to the potential risk.

The bug, which exists in OpenSSL which is a pretty common software found in technologies used to secure web data, allows potential attackers momentary access to those encryption keys that are used to establish the secure connections and essentially lift small amounts of data away. Exploiting this bug numerous times would allow a great deal of information to pass from one individual to another without any trace left behind.

Seeing as how the bug has gone unnoticed for over two years, the risk forced many websites to issue warnings and insist that their users change their passwords. However, despite the fact that the bug had existed for this long, there is little evidence to support that the Heartbleed bug would have affected anyone on a large scale. According to Seth Hardy, a senior security researcher at The Citizen Lab, “This is a major vulnerability, but the likelihood of these vulnerabilities happening is very low and the likelihood of an individual being compromised by it is also very low.”

Still, such a thing makes you wonder.

http://www.financialpost.com/m/wp/fp-tech-desk/blog.html?b=business.financialpost.com/2014/04/09/heartbleed-bugs-security-impact-may-not-be-fully-known-for-years

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