How to Protect Your Accounts from Heartbleed Bug?

Heartbleed bug is the nightmare trending all over the internet media these days. Internet giants like Gmail, Facebook, Yahoo, Pinterest have already notified their users about this vulnerability and suggested respective security measures.

What is Heartbleed bug actually?

The Heartbleed bug is a serious vulnerability in the popular OpenSSL cryptographic software library. This weakness allows the stealing of protected information, under normal security conditions used with normal SSL/TLS standards.

This bug allows anyone on the internet to gain access to the memory of the systems protected by the vulnerable versions of OpenSSL. Heartbleed bug effects the security and privacy of the internet applications like web, email and instant messaging. 

What it actually does?

Heartbleed bug compromises the security keys used to identify the service providers those encrypt the traffic, names, login credentials and actual user data. So the attackers can easily hack into the communications, steal data directly from users and services they use.

How to protect yourself?

Protecting your accounts starts from setting up strong passwords. Setting up strong passwords isn't good enough if you don't update it from time to time. It is what the major internet giants suggesting to their users to upgrade along with them.

Official information on Heartbleed is made available in the website www.heartbleed.com. They say,

As long as the vulnerable version of OpenSSL is in use it can be abused. Fixed OpenSSL has been released and now it has to be deployed. Operating system vendors and distribution, appliance vendors, independent software vendors have to adopt the fix and notify their users. Service providers and users have to install the fix as it becomes available for the operating systems, networked appliances and software they use.

So change your password today! Stay safe!