Mashable Team, 4/10/14

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.

See Full Article and List of Sites Affected …

Written by Mike Wendland APRIL 10, 2014 in Gadgets and Gear, News

Here we go. Another online security alert, reports of widespread personal information vulnerability, dire warnings, alleged security breaches at the biggest websites around and a general the-sky-is-warning panic by the Media.

It’s all about something called the Heartbleed bug, a wide-reaching security vulnerability in the SSL (Secure Socket Library) computer code used to secure something like 20%  – or one in five – of the websites on the Internet. The sites with SSL start with https://, not the normal http://.  Not all https:// sites are or were vulnerable. But all sites that were do start with the https:// prefix.

According to CNET, an attacker can exploit Heartbleed to essentially “get copies of a server’s digital keys then use that to impersonate servers or to decrypt communications from the past or potentially the future, too.”

The problem is, the flaw has  been exploitable for at least two years, and it was only discovered Monday. Nobody knows for sure whether hackers have been quietly stealing personal information for months. Some compromised Yahoo! accounts have had passwords lifted, according to reports.

What we do know is this security hole …