An encryption flaw called the Heartbleed bug is already being called one of the biggest security threats the Internet has ever seen. The bug has affected many popular websites and services — ones you might use every day, like Gmail and Facebook — and could have quietly exposed your sensitive account information (such as passwords and credit card numbers) over the past two years.
But it hasn’t always been clear which sites have been affected. Mashable reached out to various companies included on a long list of websites that could potentially have the flaw. Below, we’ve rounded up the responses from some of the most popular social, email, banking and commerce sites on the web.
ome Internet companies that were vulnerable to the bug have already updated their servers with a security patch to fix the issue. This means you’ll need to go in and change your passwords immediately for these sites. Even that is no guarantee that your information wasn’t already compromised, but there’s no indication that hackers knew about the exploit before this week.
Although changing your password regularly is always good practice, if a site or service hasn’t yet patched the problem, your information will still be vulnerable.
We’ll keep updating the list as new information comes in.
Social Networks
Was it affected? | Is there a patch? | Do you need to change your password? | What did they say? | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Unclear | Yes | Yes Yes | “We added protections for Facebook’s implementation of OpenSSL before this issue was publicly disclosed. We haven’t detected any signs of suspicious account activity, but we encourage people to … set up a unique password.” | |
No | No | No | “We didn’t use the offending implementation of OpenSSL in www.linkedin.com or www.slideshare.net. As a result, HeartBleed does not present a risk to these web properties.” | |
Tumblr | Yes | Yes | Yes Yes | “We have no evidence of any breach and, like most networks, our team took immediate action to fix the issue.” |
Unclear | Unclear | Unclear | Twitter has not yet responded to a request for comment. |
Other Companies
Was it affected? | Is there a patch? | Do you need to change your password? | What did they say? | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Apple | Unclear | Unclear | Unclear | Apple has not yet responded to a request for comment. |
Amazon | No | No | No | “Amazon.com is not affected.” |
Yes | Yes | Yes Yes* | “We have assessed the SSL vulnerability and applied patches to key Google services.” Search, Gmail, YouTube, Wallet, Play, Apps and App Engine were affected; Google Chrome and Chrome OS were not.
*Google said users do not need to change their passwords, but because of the previous vulnerability, better safe than sorry. |
|
Microsoft | No | No | No | Microsoft services were not running OpenSSL, according to LastPass. |
Yahoo | Yes | Yes | Yes Yes | “As soon as we became aware of the issue, we began working to fix it… and we are working to implement the fix across the rest of our sites right now.” Yahoo Homepage, Yahoo Search, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports, Yahoo Food, Yahoo Tech, Flickr and Tumblr were patched. More patches to come, Yahoo says. |
Was it affected? | Is there a patch? | Do you need to change your password? | What did they say? | |
---|---|---|---|---|
AOL | No | No | No | AOL told Mashable it was not running the vulnerable version of the software. |
Gmail | Yes | Yes | Yes Yes* | “We have assessed the SSL vulnerability and applied patches to key Google services.”
*Google said users do not need to change their passwords, but because of the previous vulnerability, better safe than sorry. |
Hotmail / Outlook | No | No | No | Microsoft services were not running OpenSSL, according to LastPass. |
Yahoo Mail | Yes | Yes | Yes Yes | “As soon as we became aware of the issue, we began working to fix it… and we are working to implement the fix across the rest of our sites right now.” |
Stores and Commerce
Was it affected? | Is there a patch? | Do you need to change your password? | What did they say? | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Amazon | No | No | No | “Amazon.com is not affected.” |
Amazon Web Services (for website operators) | Yes | Yes | Yes Yes | Most services were unaffected or Amazon was already able to apply mitigations (see advisory note here). Elastic Load Balancing, Amazon EC2, Amazon Linux AMI, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Ubuntu, AWS OpsWorks, AWS Elastic Beanstalk and Amazon CloudFront were patched. |
Target | No | No | No | “[We] launched a comprehensive review of all external facing aspects of Target.com… and do not currently believe that any external-facing aspects of our sites are impacted by the OpenSSL vulnerability.” |
eBay | Unclear | Unclear | Unclear | “The vast majority of our services were not impacted and our users can continue to shop securely on our marketplace.” |
PayPal | No | No | No | “Your PayPal account details were not exposed in the past and remain secure.” Full Statement |
Banks and Brokerages
Was it affected? | Is there a patch? | Do you need to change your password? | What did they say? | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Bank of America | No | No | No | “We’re currently taking precautions and steps to protect customer data from this threat and have no reason to believe any customer data has been compromised in the past.” |
Chase | No | No | No | “These sites don’t use the encryption software that is vulnerable to the Heartbleed bug.” |
E*Trade | No | No | No | E*Trade is still investigating. |
Fidelity | No | No | No | “We have multiple layers of security in place to protect our customer sites and services.” |
PNC | No | No | No | “We have tested our online and mobile banking systems and confirmed that they are not vulnerable to the Heartbleed bug.” |
Schwab | No | No | No | “Efforts to date have not detected this vulnerability on Schwab.com or any of our online channels.” |
Scottrade | No | No | No | “Scottrade does not use the affected version of OpenSSL on any of our client-facing platforms.” |
TD Ameritrade | No | No | No | TD Ameritrade “doesn’t use the versions of openSSL that were vulnerable.” |
TD Bank | No | No | No | “We’re currently taking precautions and steps to protect customer data from this threat and have no reason to believe any customer data has been compromised in the past.” |
U.S. Bank | No | No | No | “We do not use OpenSSL for customer-facing, Internet banking channels, so U.S. Bank customer data is NOT at risk.” |
Wells Fargo | No | No | No | No reason provided. |
Government and Taxes
Was it affected? | Is there a patch? | Do you need to change your password? | What did they say? | |
---|---|---|---|---|
1040.com | No | No | No | “We’re not vulnerable to the Heartbleed bug, as we do not use OpenSSL.” |
FileYour Taxes.com | No | No | No | “We continuously patch our servers to keep them updated. However, the version we use was not affected by the issue, so no action was taken.” |
H&R Block | Unclear | No | Unclear | “We are reviewing our systems and currently have found no risk to client data from this issue.” |
Healthcare .gov | Unclear | Unclear | Unclear | Healthcare.gov has not yet responded to a request for comment. |
Intuit (TurboTax) | Yes | Yes | Yes Yes | Turbotax “has examined its systems and has secured TurboTax to protect against the “Heartbleed” bug.” Full Statement |
IRS | Unclear | Unclear | Unclear | “The IRS continues to accept tax returns as normal … and systems continue operating and are not affected by this bug. We are not aware of any security vulnerabilities related to this situation.” |
Other
Was it affected? | Is there a patch? | Do you need to change your password? | What did they say? | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Dropbox | Yes | Yes | Yes Yes | On Twitter: “We’ve patched all of our user-facing services & will continue to work to make sure your stuff is always safe.” |
Evernote | Unclear | Unclear | Unclear | Evernote has not yet responded to a request for comment. |
LastPass | Yes | Yes | Yes Yes | “Though LastPass employs OpenSSL, we have multiple layers of encryption to protect our users and never have access to those encryption keys.” |
Netflix | Unclear | Unclear | Unclear | “Like many companies, we took immediate action to assess the vulnerability and address it. We are not aware of any customer impact.” |
OKCupid | Yes | Yes | Yes Yes | “We, like most of the Internet, were stunned that such a serious bug has existed for so long and was so widespread.” |
SoundCloud | Yes | Yes | Yes Yes | “We will be signing out everyone from their SoundCloud accounts … and when you sign back in, the fixes we’ve already put in place will take effect.” |
Spark Networks (JDate, Christian Mingle) | No | No | No | Sites do not use OpenSSL. |
Wunderlist | Yes | Yes | Yes Yes | “You’ll have to simply log back into Wunderlist. We also strongly recommend that you reset your password for Wunderlist.” Full Statement |
Reporters who contributed to this story include Samantha Murphy Kelly,
Lorenzo Francheschi-Bicchierai, Seth Fiegerman and Adario Strange.
Adapted from Mashable