It’s been discovered that one of the fundamental building blocks of security on the Internet – the part that encrypts all of the data between your Web-browser and the remote server – has been found to have a large security hole in it.
It’s called Heartbleed.
This is big
In summary, the secret keys that did the encryption could have been available to hackers over the last two years.
It’s a big issue, described as “On the scale of one to 10, this is an 11,” by security expert Bruce Schneier. Details can be read on the dedicated Heartbleed site.
It is unclear how much this has exploited, but as with all Internet security, safe is always best.
It’s possible that all passwords could have been available to those who used this exploit.
At the very least …
At a very minimum you should change the passwords that you use to access any services you feel hold information that you wouldn’t like others to have access to – at the very least your online banking, or services that give access to the banking, like your email.
Some experts are advising that you change all of your Internet passwords.
