There is a major flaw in the security of the World Wide Web — one that has even Internet security firms feeling a little panicked. A massive vulnerability has been found in OpenSSL, the open-source software package broadly used to encrypt Web communications. The flaw allows attackers to steal the information that is normally protected by SSL/TLS encryption, which is used to protect Web applications, e-mail communications, instant messaging (IM) and some virtual private networks (VPNs). Essentially, that means a lot of Internet users are affected. And potentially, passwords, private communications and even credit card information could be available to hackers courtesy of this newly-discovered bug. Dubbed the Heart Bleed Bug, the flaw was jointly discovered by a team of security engineers at Codenomicon and Neel Mehta of Google Security. “The Heartbleed bug allows anyone on the Internet to read the memory of the systems protected by the vulnerable versions of the OpenSSL software,” reads a Web page devoted to explaining the massive bug. “This compromises the secret keys used to identify the service providers and to encrypt the traffic, the names and passwords of the users and the actual content. This allows attackers to eavesdrop communications, steal data directly from the services and users and to impersonate services and users.” The security researches added that they tested their own services to see how bad the flaw is — and it is BAD. “We attacked ourselves from outside, without leaving a trace,” the post reads.
Read more about Heart Bleed Bug Could Compromise Large Part of the Internet
No comments:
Post a Comment