{"id":4651,"date":"2014-04-14T10:56:56","date_gmt":"2014-04-14T02:56:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/?p=4651"},"modified":"2015-03-02T12:40:02","modified_gmt":"2015-03-02T04:40:02","slug":"stem-heartbleed-bug","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/2014\/04\/14\/stem-heartbleed-bug\/","title":{"rendered":"How to stem the &#8216;Heartbleed&#8217; bug"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>OpenSSL being the open source SSL implementation, has a huge market share &#8211; at least 50% of all external-facing web properties use OpenSSL in some fashion, estimates a new Forrester Research report. \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The impact of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/heartbleed-allows-hackers-steal-sensitive-information\/\" target=\"_blank\">Heartbleed<\/a> is huge as many security pros use the secure socket layer\/transport layer security (SSL\/TLS) protocol to encrypt sensitive information transmitted between web servers and Internet browsers to secure eCommerce, banking, healthcare, and other high-risk transactions. Every personal and enterprise computing system that used a vulnerable version of OpenSSL at any point in time must consider its certificates compromised.<\/p>\n<p>The report offers a &#8220;how to&#8221; for organizations to\u00a0 fix a broken OpenSSL implementation.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s a quick summary of the recommendations:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Recompile OpenSSL libraries and\/or upgrade OpenSSL commercial software.<\/strong> The OpenSSL organization has already released a mitigation to the bug. However, the only way to fix Heartbleed is to recompile OpenSSL libraries (and then potentially recompile all your internal applications linking the fixed OpenSSL libraries) and\/or upgrade OpenSSL commercial software to the newest versions that support the bug fix.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Contact your partners, particularly your service providers.<\/strong> Heartbleed affects not only web applications but also hardware. Affected systems may have to be completely replaced, and perhaps more worrisome is the fact that existing equipment in retailers&#8217; inventories may have the defect as well.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Use existing controls to help mitigate the Heartbleed risk.\u00a0<\/strong> For example, upgrade IPS and firewall appliances with the latest Heartbleed signature and filters.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Be sure to scan all your assets for the vulnerability.<\/strong> All major vulnerability-scanning vendors are already offering updates to their products so security pros can test for the presence of the Heartbleed bug in their systems.<\/li>\n<li><strong>At the right time, force a companywide password change.<\/strong> Changing passwords prior to the application of the SSL fix will still leave the user potentially vulnerable, while providing a false sense of security.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Communicate before, during, and after the incident.<\/strong> There are very few organizations or individuals that have not been affected by Heartbleed, and for several days to come, it will remain a permanent fixture of the daily news cycle. Don&#8217;t keep employees and customers in the dark and wondering what, if any action, your organization is taking.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A &#8220;how to&#8221; for organizations to  fix a broken OpenSSL implementation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,1779],"tags":[1559,1560,1561,286],"class_list":["post-4651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-headlines","category-headlines-2","tag-cybsecurity-and-cybercrime","tag-forrester-research-report","tag-heartbleed","tag-it-security"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4651"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4651\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}