If you have been on the internet lately and surfing through websites like PC Mag and CNET, you would have come across the term Heartbleed, a computer bug that has put Internet security at risk.

The bug is so serious that it is being called the “worse security flaw in Internet history”, as it affects almost everyone on the World Wide Web.

Now with all the mumbo jumbo about Heartbleed circulating the internet, let’s take a look at what this bug is all about and how you can remain secure until it’s fixed.

What is it?
Heartbleed is a security vulnerability in the OpenSSL software. What’s OpenSSL, you ask? OpenSSL is responsible for data encryption over the web and when enabled, shows “https” in the address bar of your web browser, which means your data is secure.

The bug is reported to have affected 500,000 websites, but thankfully, most popular websites like Facebook and Google have been patched, while Twitter was never vulnerable in the first place.

What makes this bug so dangerous is that it allows hackers to access data from affected servers. This means that personal data such as usernames, passwords and worse – credit card information – can be stolen.

Who discovered casino online it?
Heartbleed was first discovered separately by cybersecurity firm Codenomicon and Google. Codenomicon then launched a domain titled Heartbleed.com to inform the public about the bug. In fact, they also designed the logo for Heartbleed that we’ve been seeing all this while.

Inner workings
In simple terms, the bug allows a single hacker to access up to 64 kilobytes (that’s about the size of several text documents put together) from a server. By today’s technological standards, that may be a small amount, but when done many times over, lots of information can be stolen.

Why the name?
According to technology website Vocativ, Heartbleed only got its name recently and was formerly known as “CVE-2014-0160”.

System administrator Ossi Herrala from Codenomicon coined the name Heartbleed as there was an extension on OpenSSL called Heartbleed and the bug was bleeding out information.

Prevention
Unfortunately, there isn’t much you can do to stop this bug as it affects websites and not your personal computer.

Most tech experts would advise you to change your passwords, which is the most natural thing to do, but only do so when the affected websites have been fixed.

Consumer technology website CNET explains that if a website has not been fixed, changing the password would be useless as you would potentially be giving the hacker your new password as well.

To test whether the websites have been fixed or not, check out http://filippo.io/Heartbleed/

Simply enter a website’s URL and results of the website’s status will appear almost instantly.