Back in April of this year, there was an encryption flaw that was known as the Heartbleed bug. It was referred to as the biggest security threat the World Wide Web had ever seen. The bug affected many websites that you probably use every day and could have exposed sensitive information, such as your passwords and/or credit card information. If you haven’t changed your passwords yet, you may want to consider doing so ASAP, especially for the websites that were confirmed affected.
So which websites were affected? And where should you go change your passwords? Fortunately, Mashable put together a helpful list of affected websites. Here are the websites where you definitely need to change your passwords:
- Tumblr
- Google/Gmail
- Amazon
- Yahoo/Yahoo Mail
- GoDaddy
- Flickr
- Netflix
- Soundcloud
- YouTube
- Dropbox
Some of these websites were unclear about how they were actually affected and what information may have been at risk, but these are websites that suggested users change their passwords, according to Mashable. See the full article and list here.
This bug works by allowing Internet users to read the memory of the systems that are protected by vulnerable versions of the OpenSSL cryptographic software library. What this means is that users have access to sensitive information – Just like if someone were to eavesdrop on your private conversation.
The majority of the major websites and organizations have done what they can to fix this problem by now. However, it’s always a good policy to change your passwords periodically. You should also create secure passwords that would be hard for anyone else to guess and make sure that all of your passwords are different.
In the event that your computer is impacted by a virus, spyware, malware or unwanted ad-ware, come on in to Everything Computers. We will help nurse your computer back to health! Check out our website or call us today for a list of services that we provide.
