What is Heartbleed vulnerability. Why it is recommended to change passowords of social and banking sites.

Hello friend, Since last week I am frequently hearing a word "Heartbleed" in news,on internet so today I thought lets check what is it actually and after some reasearch online I feel information about it must be shared as still most of the people are not aware about it.

If you google "What is Heartbleed?" then you will find no.of articles explaining what is "Heartbleed" so I am not going to share it in detail but in simple words, you know "Https://" yes, this is the one which you check in URL while doing any banking transaction online. When you see "https" in URL you are asure that all the communication between you and respective server is safe. It is based on OpenSSL which is is an open-source implementation of the SSL and TLS protocols (read more)

Heartbleed is a bug in OpenSSL due to which it viable for hackers to extract data from massive databases containing user names, passwords and other sensitive information. Most of the social networking  sites such as Facebook,Instagram,Pinterest are reported vulnerable.

Here is the screenshot for Facebook.com using a "LastPass Heartbleed checker"

I will recommend you to read below articles from cnet & mashable for more information.

Heartbleed bug: What you need to know (FAQ)

The Heartbleed Hit List: The Passwords You Need to Change Right Now

How to Protect Yourself From the Heartbleed Bug

In most of the sites its recommended to change the passwords of all your sites such as Facebook, Instagram etc. to avoid any misue of information. So if you have very old password then I will surely recommend to change it.

Your Android Smartphone too can be Affected by heartbleed. Read more here.

Thanks for reading. Hope you have benefited from this. Do share your thoughts in comment section below.

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