Heartbleed OpenSSL Bug

Today, globally, an announcement was made concerning a serious “bug” found in a key component on most servers around the world: OpenSSL. SSL stands for Secure Socket Layer, which is used to provide a secure connection to websites, servers, email, and FTP accounts. The serious bug opens a “backdoor” which allows a hacker to access encrypted data, such as usernames, passwords, emails, and actual encrypted content, such as stored credit card data and other personal information. With this bug, hackers can eavesdrop on all communication, steal data directly from the services, and can actually impersonate the services. This bug is part of the server software, and not related to any single piece of web software. Our servers were patched by our datacenter early this morning, shortly after the announcement of the bug was discovered. This actually isn’t even a new bug, but is in a release of OpenSSL that was released back in 2011. In addition, as recommended by the organization that discovered the bug, We have deactivated all encryption keys in place on the server, and have had GlobalSign reissue a new SSL certificate for the server using new encrypted keys.

Here’s the synopsis of the Heartbleed Bug:

The Heartbleed Bug is a serious vulnerability in the popular OpenSSL cryptographic software library. This weakness allows stealing the information protected, under normal conditions, by the SSL/TLS encryption used to secure the Internet. SSL/TLS provides communication security and privacy over the Internet for applications such as web, email, instant messaging (IM) and some virtual private networks (VPNs).

The Heartbleed bug allows anyone on the Internet to read the memory of the systems protected by the vulnerable versions of the OpenSSL software. 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 on communications, steal data directly from the services and users and to impersonate services and users.