What is the Heartbleed Bug?
The Heartbleed bug is a vulnerability in the OpenSSL cryptographic library that allows stealing of information normally protected by the SSL/TLS encryption used to secure the Internet. OpenSSL is open-source software that is widely used to encrypt web communications. SSL/TLS is what normally provides secure and private communication over the Internet via websites, email, IM, and VPNs. According to CNET, an attacker can exploit Heartbleed to essentially “get copies of a server’s digital keys then use that to impersonate servers or to decrypt communications from the past or potentially the future, too.”
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