Tip: Test Your Site for the Heartbleed Bug

The Heartbleed Bug is a very serious weakness in the open-source cryptographic software library called “OpenSSL”. This vulnerability 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).

Major websites including the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA), Google, Amazon, Yahoo to name a few were affected by the bug.

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

To see if your encrypted website has this vulnerability, visit http://filippo.io/Heartbleed/

If your website is affected, you will need to carry out the following steps:

1. Apply the OpenSSL patch (1.0.1g) on your affected servers, or recompile OpenSSL without the Heartbeat extension.
2. Re-issue your SSL certificates on all affected servers.
3. Test your SSL installations.
4. Advise your servers’ users to update their passwords.

Additional information:

• OpenSSL Project: https://www.openssl.org/news/secadv_20140407.txt
• Heartbleed.com: http://www.heartbleed.com
• Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heartbleed_bug
• Thawte Online Community: https://community.thawte.com/?tid=HPSpr

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