IT WAS an innocent mistake, with huge consequences. Robin Seggelmann was a programmer working on OpenSSL, a software library used to make secure connections over the internet. In 2014, it emerged that a tiny error of his – likened to misspelling “Mississippi”, and all but invisible in 400,000-odd lines of code – had allowed the world’s hackers into the servers of Google, Amazon, Facebook, Tumblr and more, exposing sensitive personal data including credit card numbers and passwords.
It’s not Seggelmann’s fault; more just one of many indictments of our slapdash approach to computer security. It took two years before anyone noticed the bug, dubbed Heartbleed. By then, it was affecting pretty much every server in the world. The only solution was to patch the software, and hope for the best.Read More…
