If you’ve spent any time online over the past few days, you’ve undoubtedly heard about the Heartbleed bug, a security vulnerability that was announced in OpenSSL earlier this week. It has sent many tech companies such as Google, Yahoo & Tumblr scrambling to install patches and ensure that they are doing all they can to protect their customer’s private information. But what exactly is it and does it affect businesses like yours and mine? Let’s take a closer look and find out.
What is Heartbleed?
Simply put, the Heartbleed bug affects sites using a certain type of security certificate to protect their website. When you visit a site that uses https:// (rather than just http://) that website is using what is called Secure Socket Layer or SSL technology to encrypt or “hide” sensitive information while transmitted on the internet. You probably use SSL sites everyday if you use online banking or a cloud based email program such as Microsoft Exchange, Gmail or Yahoo.
There are many different SSL technologies that can be used to “secure” a website, one of which is called OpenSSL. Open SSL is the technology that the security breach was discovered in, which means that not all https websites have been compromised. In fact, we found a great list of websites affected by the Heartbleed bug (shown below) that was put out by Mashable this morning.
What you can do
If you have any accounts with the companies listed below, please change your password immediately. We always recommend changing your password on a regular basis and it’s a good habit to get into. Be sure your passwords are a combination of letters, numbers and special characters – make it strong but also something you can remember without having to write down.
If your business’ website uses SSL technology, be sure to contact your website administrator to discuss which type of SSL is used.
Stay Informed
We are mindful how important security is to all businesses and we will be monitoring the developments of the Heartbleed bug as they continue to emerge. Be sure to follow us on Twitter @btsmaine, Like us on Facebook and sign up for our email list on our website, www.burgesscomputer.com
Websites Affected by the Heartbleed Bug
Social Networks
|
Was it affected? |
Is there a patch? |
Do you need to change your password? |
What did they say? |
|
| Unclear | Yes | YesYes | “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 | YesYes | “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 | YesYes* | “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 | YesYes | “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 | YesYes* | “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 | YesYes | “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 | YesYes | 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 | YesYes | “We’ve been updating GoDaddy services that use the affected OpenSSL version.” |
| 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 | YesYes | 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 | YesYes | 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 | YesYes | “Though LastPass employs OpenSSL, we have multiple layers of encryption to protect our users and never have access to those encryption keys.” |
| 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 | YesYes | “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 | YesYes | “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 | YesYes | “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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