
(Published by Mashable.com)
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 some of the most popular social, email, banking and commerce sites on the web. We’ve rounded up their responses below.
Some 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 also no indication that hackers knew about the exploit before this week. The companies that are advising customers to change their passwords are doing so as a precautionary measure.
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 | “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.” | |
Yes | Yes | Yes | “Our security teams worked quickly on a fix and we have no evidence of any accounts being harmed. But because this event impacted many services across the web, we recommend you update your password on Instagram and other sites, particularly if you use the same password on multiple sites.” | |
No | No | No | “We didn’t use the offending implementation of OpenSSL in http://www.linkedin.com or http://www.slideshare.net. As a result, HeartBleed does not present a risk to these web properties.” | |
Yes | Yes | Yes | “We fixed the issue on Pinterest.com, and didn’t find any evidence of mischief. To be extra careful, we e-mailed Pinners who may have been impacted, and encouraged them to change their passwords.” | |
Tumblr | Yes | Yes | Yes | “We have no evidence of any breach and, like most networks, our team took immediate action to fix the issue.” |
No | Yes | Unclear | Twitter wrote that OpenSSL “is widely used across the internet and at Twitter. We were able to determine that [our] servers were not affected by this vulnerability. We are continuing to monitor the situation.” While reiterating that they were unaffected, Twitter toldMashable that they did apply a patch. |
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* | “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 | “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* | “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 | YesYes | “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 | 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. |
eBay | Unclear | Unclear | No | eBay initially said, “The vast majority of our services were not impacted and our users can continue to shop securely on our marketplace.” They later added, “When you login to eBay using your user name and password these details were not exposed to the OpenSSL vulnerability.” |
GoDaddy | Yes | Yes | Yes | “We’ve been updating GoDaddy services that use the affected OpenSSL version.” Full Statement |
Nordstrom | No | No | No | “Nordstrom websites do not use OpenSSL encryption.” |
PayPal | No | No | No | “Your PayPal account details were not exposed in the past and remain secure.” Full Statement |
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.” |
Walmart | No | No | No | “We do not use that technology so we have not been impacted by this particular breach.” |
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 | “A majority of our platforms do NOT use OpenSSL, and the ones that do, we have confirmed no vulnerabilities.” |
Capital One | No | No | No | “Capital One uses a version of encryption that is not vulnerable to Heartbleed.” |
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 | No | No | No | “Healthcare.gov consumer accounts are not affected by this vulnerability.” |
Intuit (TurboTax) | 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 | On Twitter: “We’ve patched all of our user-facing services & will continue to work to make sure your stuff is always safe.” |
Evernote | No | No | No | “Evernote’s service, Evernote apps, and Evernote websites … all use non-OpenSSL implementations of SSL/TLS to encrypt network communications.”Full Statement |
LastPass | Yes | Yes | No | “Though LastPass employs OpenSSL, we have multiple layers of encryption to protect our users and never have access to those encryption keys.” Users don’t need to change their master passwords because they’re never sent to the server. But passwords for other sites stored in LastPass might need to be changed. |
Minecraft | Yes | Yes | YesYes | “We were forced to temporary suspend all of our services. … The exploit has been fixed. We can not guarantee that your information wasn’t compromised.” More Information |
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 | “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 | SoundCloud emphasized that there were no indications of any foul play and that the company’s actions were simply precautionary. |
Spark Networks (JDate, Christian Mingle) | No | No | No | Sites do not use OpenSSL. |
Wunderlist | 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, Adario Strange and Kurt Wagner.