Heartbleed & Solarbotics

Solar botics
April 10, 2014

As I imagine most of you out there have heard by now, there's a pretty serious vulnerability in the OpenSSL that was announced on April 7th called CVE-2014-0160, better known as Heartbleed. For those of you wondering what the heck this "Heartbleed" thing is, awhile back OpenSSL added a "heartbeat" feature which allowed servers and computers with a secure connection to "ping" each other regularly, in order to keep the connection open. The problem comes from a bug in OpenSSL which lets a computer without the secure connection to still ping this way, and that connection could be exploited to include up to 64K chunks from the server's RAM, which unfortunately can include recently decrypted usernames, passwords, etc.

What Is Solarbotics Doing About it?
We've already taken steps to patch this hole on our own servers, and have reissued our EV SSL certificate (if you take a peek at the cert, you'll notice the validation date has been bumped up to 4/9/2014) which has already been installed. We've also cleared all existing sessions on the server as those were at risk as well. The unfortunate side effect of that is that anyone who had been building a cart without logging in will need to do so again.

What Should You Be Doing About it?
You should be giving strong consideration to resetting & updating all your passwords (yes seriously), particularly for the important things in your life like email, banking, facebook/twitter/reddit etc. This vulnerability was announced Monday, and if someone happened to pick up your login credentials before this was patched on one of the sites you visit, the attackers could still have your login credentials. We recommend opting for two-factor verification where ever possible. Of course, not using the same password for everything becomes an important part as well and for those of you worried about keeping track, we're big fans of Keepass here at Solarbotics.

MORE POSTS

June 27, 2002
Mmmmm... Sandwich PCB's!

David Cook of the Robot Room asked us if we'd carry the partner PCB's for his book 'Robot Building for Beginners'. As we're an enthusiastic fan of this excellent book, we agreed to carry it for him. (even though we don't sell the book...yet!) Please note: You require a copy of this book to successfully […]

June 13, 2012
Cool Link Wednesday - 'That's a Lot of F...

Don't even bother reading this introduction - skip on ahead and go to the first link in the list. It'll blow your mind. Medusa -Proximity Aware Multi-Touch Tabletop This interactive surface (which is actually a version of Microsoft Surface) uses a mind-boggling 138 proximity sensors to detect people around and using the table. As far […]

March 23, 2001
LANL Workshop Update

We've got confirmation from the Santa Fe Art Institute that they are indeed handling the registration. Contact Brandy at (505) 424 5050 for registration details, or email her at info@sfai.org. Remember, this will most likely be the last hurrah for the event on May 3-6, 2001, so come now, or never again! Read More...

May 31, 2011
Postal Strike - Important Note for Shipp...

Update: Looks like Canada Post is doing a rotating strike, so only one city will be affected at a time. This means that, most likely, orders shipped via postal methods will only be delayed 2-3 days. Purolator and UPS options are not impacted, and have no delays. Ok class, fictional robotic history refresher course 101: […]

1 68 69 70 71 72 253
Solarbotics Ltd Logo
Solarbotics has been operating for more than 25 years, bringing electronics know-how and supplies to both the electronics professional and hobbyist. We'll be happy to help you too!

Solarbotics, Ltd. is not responsible for misprints or errors on product prices or information. For more information, please see our Terms and Conditions.

Warning: This product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm.
Please visit www.P65Warnings.ca.gov for more information. This item was manufactured prior to August 31, 2018.