WHAT IS HEARTBLEED BUG AND HOW CAN YOU PROTECT YOURSELF?

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 (Secure Socket Layer/transport layer security) 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. 

What leaks in practice?

“We have tested some of our own services from attacker's perspective. We attacked ourselves from outside, without leaving a trace. Without using any privileged information or credentials we were able to steal from ourselves the secret keys used for our X.509 certificates, user names and passwords, instant messages, emails and business critical documents and communication.” – Codenomicon

What can you do?

Though users don’t have much power over the Heart Bleed virus — website administrators and creators have to update their OpenSSL software — there are ways to defend important passwords on Gmail, Facebook, Yahoo! and other sites

However, if a major website is still vulnerable to the Heart Bleed bug, changing a password won’t matter; the website would have to update their software first. To defend against this, an online tool called the Heartbleed test was created to test if a website has been compromised by the virus. Simply type the web address of the website into the box, and it will let you know whether it is safe. Sites like Facebook, Gmail, Amazon, Yahoo!, Twitter and others have already updated their software.

The flaw was discovered by security firm Codenomicon and Neel Mehta, a Google security researcher. They said that even if you don’t frequently use the internet, you are most likely affected by the bug.