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Thursday, April 10, 2014

heartbleed and stuff

While I'm waiting for the pie crust to thicken up in the fridge, I'm going to quickly jot this down.
Being between a couple of worlds gives me rare insight into what's going on around me. One of these worlds is the tech world and the mainstream one. For the most part I end up explaining the tech stuff to the scientifically challenged.
On March 14, 2012 someone introduced a bug to a piece of software to a very popular program. Nobody knew it existed until last week. The program, open SSL, is used by nearly every business on the web. Do any online banking? Play any online games? Buy anything over the internet? Then you've used open SSL.
Quicker than you can say 'Patch that hole', nearly every major corporation did. Did anyone notice a software update from Micro$oft last night? Yep, that was it.
'But Will, what about all the stuff I purchased the last two Christmases with my MasterCard?'
Chances are, if you haven't had any random purchases like a trip to Cape Town and Beluga caviar for 200 of your friends, then you're good. Simply change your password and you'll be okay.
In the immortal words of Douglas Adams: Don't panic.
Change the password on your computer.
Don't freak out.
Try and stay off of public Wi-fi's for a week.
Finally, if you want to check on a site to see if it's okay to visit, enter is here to test for vulnerabilities.   

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