I’m sure some of you have read about the recently discovered ‘heart bleed’ vulnerability found in the OpenSSL protocol that exposes potentially all secured data that passes through an exposed server.
There is a site checker available here.. Heartbleed Checker

Unfortunately, singletrack is vulnerable and will remain so until the server is patched and a new certificate is issued.
While this may not seem all that important for those of us that simply log in to post nonsense on the forum, anyone with a subscription has potentially exposed private information.
It is recommended by the security experts that you not use the sites affected until they are patched and re-certified. There is no real point in changing passwords until the server is patched as any new password would be immediately exposed.

If you are interested in reading more there is information available here.. Heartbleed Bug

Mod Edit: You can read our response here http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/important-info-about-your-st-account-please-read

*reported*

[edit] is this spam? Or just odd.

Thank you for bringing this to our attention. We have patched our SSL and all indications are that we are not vulnerable to this bug. In the future, PLEASE send concerns to security@ singletrackworld.com or tech@
Thanks.

Really, genuinely, not what I was expecting of this thread.

Awesome! I thought this was a cutting post about the “bleeding hearts” on here, but it’s actually a real network vulnerability. (I think) 😀

Apologies for the alerting you to this via the forum. As far as I can see you are correctly patched now.
I assume you are considering whether to recommend that everyone changes their passwords. Does your credit card validation run through a seperate server and was it also compromised for a while.?

Sinister poster freaks everyone out?

Or a Trollist?

Eitherway..

I..B…T….

Was hoping for an advert for a singles ride. Scuttles off…

Alas chaps, this is a valid and genuine concern across the internet right now. In fact, I’ve spent the last 24 hours doing seemingly nothing else but dealing with the fallout from this wonderful finding…

Still, it pays the bills.

Yes, quite a bug. We do not process credit cards or bank details on our servers, so they will not have been exposed. We also limit other data stored on them. It is possible that passwords entered over the last day may have been exposed. We recommend regularly changing your password, and not using the same password on this site as you do on others.

On the plus side, thanks to the publicity it has gotten in the last few days, it seems that the fixes are rolling out very quickly as everyone is ensuring they are patched.
Even those that are taking a little longer to patch the bug seem to have taken the sensible precaution to simply disable the feature that is exploited in order to minimise risk while they patch and get recertified.

It should be pointed out that the recertification part is important here as the bug allows anyone who gains access to the server to get hold of your private key and therefore they can access the secure data even after the patch is applied unless a key is generated and a new certificate issued.

If I’m reading this right (and not just this page and links) we should be looking at revoking certificates and reissuing as well as patching, on a risjk assessed basis? Is that what others here are looking at too? As you can’t be sure what has already been compromised.. if ‘they’ have the keys patching alone isn’t sufficient to prevent reading the encrypted content.

EDIT: LoL, cross over of posts 🙂

Exactly right. If you have been compromised while unpatched then it’s literally like having your house broken into and your keys stolen, getting the broken window fixed but not changing the locks.!

On the plus side, thanks to the publicity it has gotten in the last few days, it seems that the fixes are rolling out very quickly as everyone is ensuring they are patched.

I think this has had remarkably little publicity for such a serious vulnerability, I only heard about it last night.

The vulnerability only became public knowledge on the 7th April.

In that case, oh balls. Bit of work to do then..

What I do find concerning is that so far there has been little to no rollout of information to potentially compromised customers with advice on changing passwords/login details and c/card details that may have been compromised.
I’d also been a bit concerned about how many ‘less well informed’ admins are simply patching the error without having their private key re-generated and a certifaicate reissue. As always in these cases it’s a battle between customers who want all the information so they can decide how far they need to go in securing themselves and the business that does not want to appear ‘unsecure’ by issuing a blanket ‘we may have been compromised and given away all your data’ notice to all their customers.

I mean to put the severity of this in perspective, the people who administer the TOR network are recommending not using the Internet AT ALL until the fixes have been rolled out across the network. Now they are highly security conscious and therefore likely to err on the side of extreme caution in these cases, but that gives you an idea of how potentially serious this is.
Any compromised site has NO WAY of knowing what data they may have given up or how many people have taken it..

How are paypal fairing in this? (fingers crossed it’s probably the only one I need to worry about)

Seems ok

Paypal seems to be patched. No way of knowing if they were compromised in the past. With them I would highly recommend enabling their 2 factor authentication for your login as a way of further securing your account. I’d actually recommend enabling 2 factor authentication whenever you can. I know that Google, Dropbox, Apple, Paypal and Microsoft offer it on their accounts, there are likely more but you’d have to check with accounts that you have.

Aye, two-factor auth makes a lot of sense in any sort of internet facing deployment.

Paypal seems to be patched. No way of knowing if they were compromised in the past.

yeah as you said further up even if they are patched right now accounts may still be compromised.

The tricky thing with this problem is that there is no real way of knowing just how long the ‘crooks’ have been aware of it and taking advantage of it, the bug has been ‘in the wild’ since 14th of March 2012, it was only discovered and patched by the honest folks a matter of days ago but someone dishonest could have known about it for going on 2years.!!!!
Additionally there is no way for a site to know if it has been compromised, the bug exposes the data in a way that shows up as normal usage in the server logs and it is therefore impossible to know if a site has lost data. Normally in a situation like this something abnormal shows up that exposes the attack and allows the site to identify what data has been compromised, in this case that is not possible.
Theoretically, there should be a blanket resetting of all passwords on all sites once they have patched themselves. I’d probably be looking at having any c/cards used online reissued once the leak is plugged too as there is a good chance that it’s gotten out somewhere.
For example, I believe Amazon only patched itself yesterday, and I’m not sure what the status of their SSL certificate is

For those of you using Chrome, there is an extension that checks any site you are visiting for this vulnerability.

Chrome Heartbleed Extension

I’d like to see a LOT more of these in the next few days..

Ars Technica issues password reset

*reported*
[edit] is this spam? Or just odd.

Note to self: Don’t go to wwaswas for IT security updates. 8)

Have any exploits for this bug been seen in the wild yet?

A list of most(all?) sites that support 2 factor authentication and how to enable it..

2 Factor Authentication list

Note to self

Don’t laugh… 🙂
wwaswas was probably personally responsible for preserving a lot of privacy today.

Note to self: Don’t go to wwaswas for IT security updates

It just seemed to have the classic spam pattern – seemingly random thread title, ‘hidden’ links to a non standard url (.io).

More like one of those ‘visit our site and we’ll infect your pc’ posts.

I’m more than happy for lots and lots of people not to come to me for IT security updates 🙂

[thanks Tom!]

It’s going to be difficult if not impossible to tell if there have been exploits as it leaves no evidence. The only real way to tell would be for someone to steal the data and then exploit it en-mass thereby exposing the hack by virtue of so much data being compromised at once. Any sensible criminal is going to sit on the data and pick and choose what he steals and when.
The more I read up on this the scarier it sounds. It’s possible that every currently issued SSL certificate will have to be revoked and blacklisted in order to be certain of re-established security. Unless this happens then there is a way to use the compromised private key to initiate a ‘Man in the middle’ attack even after a new certificate is issued.
As i read on another IT site, in terms of disaster level from 1-10, this bug registers an 11..

Just so everyone knows, if you check the issue date of the certificate on any website you login to and the issue date is before 07/04/2014 then it has been potentially compromised and your data is at risk even if you update your password.

This is a HUGE deal folks, please don’t fob this off as not affecting you. For example Amazon cannot be considered safe as of now. I am looking at there certificate information now and the certificate is almost a year old.!!!

If you don’t know how to check, when you get to a login page on any site, BEFORE you login click on the little padlock next to the URL on the address bar of your browser, you can view the certificate information from there, if the issue date is before 7/4/2014 then the site cannot be considered safe and anything you do there is potentially at risk for being stolen.

So given that all our sites run on Windows servers we’re ok as we don’t use open ssl?

or can someone stick something in an open source router that gives them the info they need?

Ah.

Is this why I have been getting a security warning popup from Windows when using the STW login and search functions for the past few weeks?

The server has to use OpenSSL for security, indications are that IIS is ok.
This is why it’s only 66% of the internet that’s potentially compromised rather than all of it. OpenSSL is the most popular implementation and is part of the standard install of Apache web server.

Does this qualify as enough publicity.. currently on the front page @ BBC news..

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-26954540

xkcd did well;

Public urged to reset all passwords

Well that’s blown it; anarchy iminent.

Thanks for the warning, Highlander. Muchos membranos or something…

wwaswas was probably personally responsible for preserving a lot of privacy today.

You’re right. He has been a true hero.

*salutes*

Does this qualify as enough publicity.. currently on the front page @ BBC news..

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-26954540

My only concern about that link, is:

Several tech firms are urging people to change all their passwords after the discovery of a major security flaw.

Probably best to make sure the site in question has patched to the newest version of OpenSSL, otherwise you’re back to square one with having potentially compromised information.