The Heartbleed Bug and how to talk about it with your non-geeky friends

One thing that my husband has been up late working on is patches and fixes due to the Heartbleed bug, information about which was publicly disclosed at the beginning of this week. What is it, and how does it affect you?

Basically, an error in the coding of a system called Open SSL meant that a person could send a query to a server and receive in return a random chunk of the server’s memory. With enough querying over time, this same person could eventually gain enough clues to compile information about the users whose information is stored on the server.

A more compact explanation can be seen in visual form, here: Continue reading “The Heartbleed Bug and how to talk about it with your non-geeky friends”