“Heartbleed Bug” OpenSSL Vulnerability

Summary

The Heartbleed bug (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heartbleed_bug) is a serious vulnerability in OpenSSL 1.0.1 through 1.0.1.f.

This vulnerability allows an attacker to read chunks of memory from servers and clients that connect using SSL through a flaw in OpenSSL’s implementation of the heartbeat extension.

OpenSSL provides critical functionality in the internet ecosystem, and therefore vulnerabilities, such as Heartbleed, have a significant impact on digital communications and their integrity.

How do I check if my server is protected?

Essentially, there are three ways you can verify if your server is protected:

1) You can open a support ticket with your hosting provider.

2) You can leverage a third party scanning tool via the web.

Below are three such sites that the community deems reputable and trustworthy. You simply enter your website and it will let you know:

3) You can run a scanning tool locally on your server. One such tool is:

https://github.com/n8whnp/ssltest-stls/blob/master/ssltest-stls.py

What do I do if my server is not protected?

Contact your local system administrator or hosting provider immediately! They will have the technical expertise to update the OpenSSL libraries on your server to protect your SSL communications going forward.

Once I have patched my server, is there anything else I need to do?

Due to the nature of the vulnerability it is not possible to immediately know what information, including private keys, passwords or session ID’s, may have been compromised. Attacks that leverage the Heartbleed bug occur very early in an information exchange process, before a full connection has been made, and thus leave no log history that an attack has occurred.

We recommend that you take precautionary action and regenerate all SSH keys as well as reissue all SSL certificates in use.

If you have purchased SSL certificates through a third party, you should ask your SSL provider for more information on how you  can reissue your certificates.

We also recommend that you take precautionary action concerning passwords used to authenticate your websites. This would include resetting administrative passwords as well as contacting your customers and asking them to reset their passwords.

How have the Cloud3.ca servers and my account been affected by Heartbleed?

The Cloud3.ca website, our public servers and the cloud3.ca SSL certificate end point were not vulnerable to the Heartbleed bug when it was publicly disclosed on April 7th 2014.

Any secure communication with our servers, such as logging into the members area, would not be affected by any attacks following the public disclosure of the Heartbleed bug.

The Heartbleed bug has had a profound impact on the transmission of secure data throughout the Internet. It is for that reason that we are encouraging our customers to reset their member area passwords at their earliest convenience as a matter of common password maintenance. Please remember to always make your passwords unique, random and periodically rotate them.