Like a flash in the pan, the Heartbleed Bug has faded away from mainstream news to only be whispered by those data security experts assigned to address server security issues for companies. With the lack of any current information to the public at large, many Internet users will be led to believe that servers are now secure as they will surf through multiple web pages and log into personal accounts without worrying about their private information being compromised.
Unfortunately, the Heartbleed Bug is still going on strong and waiting to grab people’s passwords, usernames, and credit card numbers that are stored on vulnerable servers. The threat has not disappeared as Internet users need to be aware of this fact and take the appropriate safety measures.
300K Servers Still Infected By This Virus
Research conducted by Errata Security had discovered there were 600,000 servers affected when the Heartbleed virus was first discovered in April, according to Fox News. The bug was found in the OpenSSL encryption tool as hackers could manipulate it to gain valuable private information stored on servers throughout the Internet. In June, only 300,000 servers around the world remained vulnerable.
Nobody should assume that these 300K servers are from little known companies that don’t have the budget to patch their servers. The Errata Security company has detected that major e-retailers and well-known businesses have servers that can be a threat to Internet users. The names of these companies has not been shared with anyone thus-far.
Why A Patch May Never Come For These Servers
So when can people expect a patch for the remaining 300,000 servers? It may never happen. Some of the infected servers may be low-priority and do not store any important information that can become compromised. Other servers may be slowly phased out when the company upgrades to new systems. A few of the servers could be so old that they are simply not being maintained despite still being operational, according to Tech World.
That good news is that these 300,000 servers only make up the 1% of servers used around the world. Errata will continue to perform their penetration testing by forming attacks on servers to determine how many are still vulnerable. The company believes that the number of servers will continue to dwindle although there may still be about 1,000 servers still unprotected in the near future.
What Can Be Done About These Servers?
Unless a company actively seeks a patch to secure server operations from the Heartbleed Bug, there isn’t much anybody can do. Internet users can practice safe online surfing practices by not logging in or giving up personal information to websites that haven’t been updated in some time or have told users that they’ve established a patch for their server systems.
Internet users can also ensure that all their passwords are different from each other. So if one password becomes compromised by an infected server, it cannot be used to gain access to other websites or personal information that the user has set up online.
+Katrina is a computer savvy tech specializing in designing and manufacturing custom server racks with racksolutions.com
