The HeartBleed Vulnerability: The Next Step for Users
On Monday, April 7, 2014, the information security community received news about a vulnerability in the OpenSSL (Open Secure Socket Layers) cryptographic library called the “Heartbleed” bug that can allow hackers the ability to collect passwords, credit cards numbers, private keys and other data on servers that operated the software.
OpenSSL is a very popular tool used on many websites such as LinkedIn, FaceBook, Gmail and many others sites and it is estimated about two-thirds of all websites on the Internet were exposed to this vulnerability for the past two years.
Many security professionals and researcher are describing the Heartbleed bug as one of the biggest security threats the Internet has ever been exposed too and should be taken very seriously.
The main issues with the event stems from the time duration of the vulnerability was in place in conjunction with the vulnerability being unknown for so long. Furthermore, companies do not know if their users were affected by the OpenSLL vulnerability because exploitation of the bug would have left no trace of occurrence.
The positive side of this matter is a patch was released that got rid of the vulnerability, but it is imperative users conduct the following tasks to ensure their security and privacy:
- Change your passwords immediately.
- Do not use the same passwords on multiple online identities.
To check and see if a site you use or plan to use is or was vulnerable to the Heartbleed vulnerability use one of the links below:
or
https://lastpass.com/heartbleed/
Also, below is a quick reference chart courtesy of Mashable.com.
Social Networks
| Was it affected? | Is there a patch? | Do you need to change your password? | What did they say? | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unclear | Yes | Yes Yes | “We added protections for Facebook’s implementation of OpenSSL before this issue was publicly disclosed. We haven’t detected any signs of suspicious account activity, but we encourage people to … set up a unique password.” | |
| No | No | No | “We didn’t use the offending implementation of OpenSSL in www.linkedin.com or www.slideshare.net. As a result, HeartBleed does not present a risk to these web properties.” | |
| Tumblr | Yes | Yes | Yes Yes | “We have no evidence of any breach and, like most networks, our team took immediate action to fix the issue.” |
| Unclear | Unclear | Unclear | Twitter wrote that OpenSSL “is widely used across the internet and at Twitter. We were able to determine that [our] servers were not affected by this vulnerability. We are continuing to monitor the situation.”Twitter has not yet responded to Mashable‘s request for comment. |
Other Companies
| Was it affected? | Is there a patch? | Do you need to change your password? | What did they say? | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apple | Unclear | Unclear | Unclear | Apple has not yet responded to a request for comment. |
| Amazon | No | No | No | “Amazon.com is not affected.” |
| Yes | Yes | Yes Yes* | “We have assessed the SSL vulnerability and applied patches to key Google services.” Search, Gmail, YouTube, Wallet, Play, Apps and App Engine were affected; Google Chrome and Chrome OS were not.*Google said users do not need to change their passwords, but because of the previous vulnerability, better safe than sorry. | |
| Microsoft | No | No | No | Microsoft services were not running OpenSSL, according to LastPass. |
| Yahoo | Yes | Yes | Yes Yes | “As soon as we became aware of the issue, we began working to fix it… and we are working to implement the fix across the rest of our sites right now.” Yahoo Homepage, Yahoo Search, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports, Yahoo Food, Yahoo Tech, Flickr and Tumblr were patched. More patches to come, Yahoo says. |
| Was it affected? | Is there a patch? | Do you need to change your password? | What did they say? | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AOL | No | No | No | AOL told Mashable it was not running the vulnerable version of the software. |
| Gmail | Yes | Yes | Yes Yes* | “We have assessed the SSL vulnerability and applied patches to key Google services.”*Google said users do not need to change their passwords, but because of the previous vulnerability, better safe than sorry. |
| Hotmail / Outlook | No | No | No | Microsoft services were not running OpenSSL, according to LastPass. |
| Yahoo Mail | Yes | Yes | Yes Yes | “As soon as we became aware of the issue, we began working to fix it… and we are working to implement the fix across the rest of our sites right now.” |
Stores and Commerce
| Was it affected? | Is there a patch? | Do you need to change your password? | What did they say? | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon | No | No | No | “Amazon.com is not affected.” |
| Amazon Web Services (for website operators) | Yes | Yes | Yes Yes | Most services were unaffected or Amazon was already able to apply mitigations (see advisory note here). Elastic Load Balancing, Amazon EC2, Amazon Linux AMI, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Ubuntu, AWS OpsWorks, AWS Elastic Beanstalk and Amazon CloudFront were patched. |
| eBay | Unclear | Unclear | Unclear | “The vast majority of our services were not impacted and our users can continue to shop securely on our marketplace.” |
| GoDaddy | Yes | Yes | Yes Yes | “We’ve been updating GoDaddy services that use the affected OpenSSL version.” Full Statement |
| PayPal | No | No | No | “Your PayPal account details were not exposed in the past and remain secure.” Full Statement |
| Target | No | No | No | “[We] launched a comprehensive review of all external facing aspects of Target.com… and do not currently believe that any external-facing aspects of our sites are impacted by the OpenSSL vulnerability.” |
Banks and Brokerages
| Was it affected? | Is there a patch? | Do you need to change your password? | What did they say? | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bank of America | No | No | No | “We’re currently taking precautions and steps to protect customer data from this threat and have no reason to believe any customer data has been compromised in the past.” |
| Chase | No | No | No | “These sites don’t use the encryption software that is vulnerable to the Heartbleed bug.” |
| E*Trade | No | No | No | E*Trade is still investigating. |
| Fidelity | No | No | No | “We have multiple layers of security in place to protect our customer sites and services.” |
| PNC | No | No | No | “We have tested our online and mobile banking systems and confirmed that they are not vulnerable to the Heartbleed bug.” |
| Schwab | No | No | No | “Efforts to date have not detected this vulnerability on Schwab.com or any of our online channels.” |
| Scottrade | No | No | No | “Scottrade does not use the affected version of OpenSSL on any of our client-facing platforms.” |
| TD Ameritrade | No | No | No | TD Ameritrade “doesn’t use the versions of openSSL that were vulnerable.” |
| TD Bank | No | No | No | “We’re currently taking precautions and steps to protect customer data from this threat and have no reason to believe any customer data has been compromised in the past.” |
| U.S. Bank | No | No | No | “We do not use OpenSSL for customer-facing, Internet banking channels, so U.S. Bank customer data is NOT at risk.” |
| Wells Fargo | No | No | No | No reason provided. |
Government and Taxes
| Was it affected? | Is there a patch? | Do you need to change your password? | What did they say? | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1040.com | No | No | No | “We’re not vulnerable to the Heartbleed bug, as we do not use OpenSSL.” |
| FileYour Taxes.com | No | No | No | “We continuously patch our servers to keep them updated. However, the version we use was not affected by the issue, so no action was taken.” |
| H&R Block | Unclear | No | Unclear | “We are reviewing our systems and currently have found no risk to client data from this issue.” |
| Healthcare .gov | Unclear | Unclear | Unclear | Healthcare.gov has not yet responded to a request for comment. |
| Intuit (TurboTax) | Yes | Yes | Yes Yes | Turbotax “has examined its systems and has secured TurboTax to protect against the “Heartbleed” bug.” Full Statement |
| IRS | Unclear | Unclear | Unclear | “The IRS continues to accept tax returns as normal … and systems continue operating and are not affected by this bug. We are not aware of any security vulnerabilities related to this situation.” |
Other
| Was it affected? | Is there a patch? | Do you need to change your password? | What did they say? | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dropbox | Yes | Yes | Yes Yes | On Twitter: “We’ve patched all of our user-facing services & will continue to work to make sure your stuff is always safe.” |
| Evernote | No | No | No | “Evernote’s service, Evernote apps, and Evernote websites … all use non-OpenSSL implementations of SSL/TLS to encrypt network communications.” Full Statement |
| LastPass | Yes | Yes | Yes Yes | “Though LastPass employs OpenSSL, we have multiple layers of encryption to protect our users and never have access to those encryption keys.” |
| Minecraft | Yes | Yes | Yes Yes | “We were forced to temporary suspend all of our services. … The exploit has been fixed. We can not guarantee that your information wasn’t compromised.” More Information |
| Netflix | Unclear | Unclear | Unclear | “Like many companies, we took immediate action to assess the vulnerability and address it. We are not aware of any customer impact.” |
| OKCupid | Yes | Yes | Yes Yes | “We, like most of the Internet, were stunned that such a serious bug has existed for so long and was so widespread.” |
| SoundCloud | Yes | Yes | Yes Yes | “We will be signing out everyone from their SoundCloud accounts … and when you sign back in, the fixes we’ve already put in place will take effect.” |
| Spark Networks (JDate, Christian Mingle) | No | No | No | Sites do not use OpenSSL. |
| Wunderlist | Yes | Yes | Yes Yes | “You’ll have to simply log back into Wunderlist. We also strongly recommend that you reset your password for Wunderlist.” Full Statement |
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