McAfee, an internet security and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC) released a free tool for consumers to be able to easily determine the websites affected by Heartbleed Bug and protect themselves from potential threats that will be caused by cyber criminals.
The Heartbleed Bug is vulnerability in the OpenSSL encryption software, which is intended to protect users’ passwords, credit and debit card numbers and other sensitive personal information. The flaw in the SSL code could allow hackers to access the system memory and potentially obtain sensitive information.
Users should protect themselves by checking if the websites they are visiting are affected and changed their account passwords once the website has been patched. According to McAffee, two-thirds of all websites have been affected by Heartbleed Bug.
Heartbleed Checker
According to Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC) McAfee, consumers can easily check if the websites they frequently visit are already upgraded to the version of the OpenSSL that is not susceptible to the internet security bug by entering the domain names to its Heartbleed Checker tool.
Gary Davis, vice president of consumer marketing at McAffe said, “It’s important that users first check to make sure the websites they frequent are updated before changing their passwords.”
“In the wake of confusing information floating around, our tool makes it easy for consumers to quickly access the information they need. Armed with this information, consumers can decide when it is time to change their passwords and regain confidence in a safe web surfing experience,” added Davis.
Security researchers discovered Heartbleed Bug
A security researcher, Neel Mehta from Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) and a team of security engineers at security website, Codenomicon discovered the Heartbleed bug separately last week.
Impact of Heartbleed Bug
According to Kevin Bocek, vice president of security strategy and threat intelligence at Venafi, a cybersecurity company in Salt Lake City, the scope of the vulnerability of the Heartbleed bug in the OpenSSL encryption system was immense and the consequence is scary. He said, “I’ve talked about this like a ‘Mad Max’ moment. It’s a bit of anarchy right now. Because we don’t know right now who has the keys and certificates on the Internet right now.”
Patches have been released
Many agencies alerted their users about the Heartbleed Bug and implemented preventive measures such as Canada Revenue Agency (CRA), which temporarily shut down its online services last week. Patches for the OpenSSL vulnerability have been released for all major operating systems.
