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You probably know by now that the newly discovered Heartbleed, a bug or a flaw in the security of websites, is considered deeply devastating for users, while some cyber attacks allegedly made possible by exploiting the Heartbleed already pushed a lot of people on the verge of a nervous breakdown, as two attacks discovered last week left hundreds of people orphan of their personal data. If you are unaware of the catastrophic effects of the Heartbleed bug, suffice to say that by exploiting it, cyber criminals can access and steal not only your passwords, but also your credit card details and online banking data. The Heartbleed bug is considered, for good reason, one of the biggest threats the Internet has ever experience in its existence and if you paid attention to Google news, you know that Android users have been warned that their tablets and smartphones might be affected by the Heartbleed bug, while the tech giant assured everybody it will take immediate measures to patch and fix any security problems.
Now let’s take a look over some major events that took place in the last weeks, to see how serious the Heartbleed bug threat is and what you can do about it.
The first two cyber attacks have been reported last week, with a Canadian tax agency and a U.K. parenting site being the first hits, although no relationship between the two attacks was confirmed at the time. The results of the attacks, however, are quite powerful. According to the news, at least one of the two breaches led to hundreds of users having their personal information stolen by the hackers.
Two weeks ago, Mashable, together with other major tech websites, released comprehensive data regarding the sites that are affected by the Heartbleed bug and the ones that were safe. The list included social media networks – namely Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr and Pinterest, together with other companies, such as Google and Yahoo’s mail services. An immediate password change was recommended, although it is still unclear if the sudden password changes didn’t provided the hackers with fresh and direct access to the accounts, once people provided them with new passwords. This is why the best thing you can do right now is to check the sites that have patched the flaws and the problems and change your passwords and log – ins on those secure sites. There are Heartbleed vulnerability checkers and if you find an important site that hasn’t patched the flaws yet, you can ask the company about the problem, because, in the words of specialists,
It’s important to wait to get the “all clear” sign from a company or service before changing, especially now that this bug is out in the open. Changing a password before the bug is fully patched wont’ make things any better.
Keep yourself updated to the news and don’t neglect the Heartbleed bug issue, as you may never know who and when strikes.
