If you have been living in a cave for the last week then you’ve missed a load of Heartbleed news that doesn’t apply to you. If, on the other hand, you are connected to the internet then you couldn’t (or shouldn’t) have missed the mass panic.
So to summarise, Heartbleed is a bug in a security software package called OpenSSL used by hundreds of thousands of web and email servers worldwide. The flaw allows attackers to steal cryptographic keys used to secure online commerce and web connections and hack into leaked personal information. The bug is named Heartbleed because it exploits a failure in an extension called “heartbeat”.
Security and virus software providers have seen a massive opportunity to exploit consumers, by releasing a mass of testing and solution tools which promise to help you establish how affected you were. Researchers at London based security consultancy Hut3 have said that “95% of the most popular tools are not reliable. You can find out all the latest information and FAQ’s over on Heartbleed.com.
I thought it would be interesting to find the most socially shared pieces of content about Heartbleed using the wonderful search tool and stats from Buzzsumo.
Heartbleed Webcomic
Source: XKCD.com
Webcomic creator Randall Munroe produced this great little comic strip explaining how the Heartbleed bug works. It clearly struck a cord with fans as it got a huge amount of shares:
Source: Buzzsumo
Heartbleed Infographic
Source: LWG Consulting
There have been hundreds of infographics churned out about Heartbleed. This infographic by the folks at LWG Consulting was hosted over on a Venture Beat blog and achieved the most shares:
Source: Buzzsumo
Heartbleed Article
The folks at Mashable created a very useful ‘Heartbleed Hit List‘ to help users find the affected sites and which passwords they need to change. This, like a lot of Mashable’s content, went viral with the following shares:
Source: Buzzsumo
Heartbleed Tool
This online tool by Filippo Valsorda lets you test your server for CVE-2014-0160, better known as the Heartbleed vulnerability: https://filippo.io/Heartbleed/
Heartbleed Video
This video by Elastica, a cloud security start-up, describes the mechanics of the Heartbleed bug and was actually the most shared video on Buzzsumo…
Source: Buzzsumo
…but as a non code geek I found it mind numbingly dull, so I have included this simpler video explanation by Mashable’s Armand Valdes:
Heartbleed Interview
Michael Calce – Photo by Vincenzo D’Alto
Macleans published an interview with Michael ‘MafiaBoy’ Calce, a hacker turned security consultant, with his thoughts on the Heartbleed bug. The interview was’nt share tastic but here are the figures:
Source: Buzzsumo
Title image courtesty of Saul Herrera
I would love to see any great pieces of Heartbleed content you have come across. Pop it in the comments section below.