We all enjoy the luxury of checking off our to-do lists from the comforts of home. Why make a stop by the bank when you can just log in and make that transfer from your laptop? Who wants to go by the mall when you can find the exact size and color of that new jacket you want with just a little browsing on your iPad? One click and it’s on its way to your doorstep. All you have to do is make sure that little padlock is showing and you know you can securely share your personal information, right?
Until recently, I felt that sense of security, too. I’ve taken (more than) reasonable steps to secure my information, so I pretty much order online whenever I want without giving it a second thought.
My guess is that you feel pretty comfortable banking online, at least from your computer, if not yet on your mobile device. I do too, despite all of the hackers out there trying to intercept our bank account numbers and passwords. Most of us are at ease because of the little lock symbol that appears before the URL when we visit our bank (or Gmail, Yahoo, and so forth). That lock symbol means that our communication is encrypted (digitally scrambled) by a standard called OpenSSL. Over time, SSL has proven to be relatively safe.
Just this week, however, it was discovered that OpenSSL was hacked using a vulnerability known as the Heartbleed Bug. Jeremy Bowers, as interviewed on NPR, put eloquently (emphasis mine):
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We all enjoy the luxury of checking off our to-do lists from the comforts of home. Why make a stop by the bank when you can just log in and make that transfer from your laptop? Who wants to go by the mall when you can find the exact size and color of that new jacket you want with just a little browsing on your iPad? One click and it’s on its way to your doorstep. All you have to do is make sure that little padlock is showing and you know you can securely share your personal information, right?
