Techmeme: The Heartbleed Bug, explained (Timothy B. Lee/Vox)

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April 9, 2014, 12:10 AM

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Heartbleed:

Heartbleed bug allows anyone on the Internet to read the memory of systems protected by vulnerable versions of OpenSSL — The Heartbleed Bug — The Heartbleed Bug is a serious vulnerability in the popular OpenSSL cryptographic software library. This weakness allows stealing the information protected …

More: Reuters, Tumblr Staff, VentureBeat, ZDNet, Business Insider, Heroku, eWeek, web.nvd.nist.gov, ReadWrite, Tor, existential type crisis, BuzzFeed, Los Angeles Times, NEWS.com.au, OpenSSL, US-CERT, The LastPass Blog, Netcraft, Techdirt, Guardian, SSegurança, The Verge, CloudFlare Blog, Gotta Be Mobile, Gizmodo, The Register, It's a Gadget, TechCrunch, Agile Blog, Giles Bowkett, The Hacker News, SC Magazine, LinuxInsider, Twitter Status, NGINX, SiliconANGLE, NextBigWhat, Computerworld, Forbes, I4U News, TechSpot, WP Engine, Softpedia News, PandoDaily, Atlassian Blogs, SiliconBeat, Krebs on Security, SecurityWeek, VentureBreak, The Tech Report, Lifehacker, CoinReport, Electronista, Daily Dot and Threatpost

Tweets: @mattblaze, @ioerror, @iljawascoding, @asher_wolf, @eastdakota, @0xabad1dea, @ac3xx, @krisjelbring, @neogeen, @calebgarling and @anildash

Timothy B. Lee / Vox:

The Heartbleed Bug, explained — There was big news in the computer security world yesterday when researchers announced a massive vulnerability in popular web encryption software called OpenSSL. Major online service providers are scrambling to address the problem. What happened?

More: Ars Technica, Gigaom and SlashGear

Tweets: @wpwend42 and @dangillmor

Matthew Green / A Few Thoughts …:

Heartbleed: mundane coding error more devastating than fancy crypto attacks like BEAST, CRIME — Attack of the week: OpenSSL Heartbleed — Ouch. I start every lecture in my security class by asking the students to give us any interesting security or crypto news they've seen recently, preferably with a focus on vulnerabilities.

More: Electronic Frontier Foundation, Ars Technica, Softpedia News and SiliconANGLE

Stephen Shankland / CNET:

‘Heartbleed’ bug undoes Web encryption, reveals Yahoo passwords

Tweets: @briankrebs

Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:

Critical crypto bug in OpenSSL opens two-thirds of the Web to eavesdropping

More: The Register, GitHub, Associated Press, Naked Security and ZDNet

David Bellona / The Twitter Blog:

Twitter web gets new timeline filtering options, new profile design features ‘pinned’ and ‘best’ tweets — Coming soon: a whole new you, in your Twitter profile — Moment by moment, your Twitter profile shows the world who you are.

Isadora Lapowsky / Wired:

With its latest redesign, Twitter imitates Facebook in an effort to appeal to the mainstream — The Reason Twitter Wants to Look Like Facebook: Your Parents — There's blatant imitation, and then there's thoughtful strategy. At first blush, Twitter's new redesign …

More: Financial Times, Telegraph, Tech Times, The Register and Business Insider Australia

John Gruber / Daring Fireball:

Rather than diminish the web, mobile apps build on and diversify it, enabling new experiences — Rethinking What We Mean by ‘Mobile Web’ — Chris Dixon, in a piece titled “The Decline of the Mobile Web”, citing stats from ComScore and Flurry: … I think Dixon has it all wrong.

More: Matt Mullenweg, Gigaom, Medium and inessential.com

Tweets: @joshuatopolsky and @carnage4life

Scotty Loveless / Overthought:

Apple Genius' iOS battery life guide: disable location and background refresh for Facebook, don't quit apps — The Ultimate Guide to Solving iOS Battery Drain — Updated April 7, 2014: added Step 8 to the list. — Added Korean Translation (provided by Yoon Jiman)

More: BGR, VentureBeat, Computerworld, NEWS.com.au, The Next Web, bizjournals, iPhone in Canada Blog, Guardian, Daily Dot, Softpedia News, Softpedia News, Ubergizmo, iPhone in Canada Blog, publicNotepad and Cult of Mac

Paul Mutton / Netcraft:

Survey says 6000+ websites still hosted on Windows XP, including 14 belonging to US government — Thousands of websites still hosted on Windows XP — Thousands of websites are still hosted on Windows XP computers, despite the operating system reaching the end of its extended support period today.

More: WinBeta, theWHIR.com and PC World

Mark Hachman / PC World:

Obituary: Windows XP passes away, leaving behind millions of mourning supporters

Amir Efrati / The Information:

Comcast preparing wireless service built on combination of Wi-Fi and leased cellular capacity — Comcast Quietly Preps Challenge to Wireless Carriers — Google isn't the only technology giant thinking of offering new mobile phone plans to unseat wireless giants.

More: Gigaom, The Verge, CrackBerry.com, dailywireless.org, Mashable and Business Insider. Tweets: @amir

Richard Byrne Reilly / VentureBeat:

U.S. Air Force is testing Google Glass & building apps for battlefield use (exclusive) — Above: Airforce test dummy wearing Google Glass — The U.S. Air Force's “BATMAN” research team at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio is beta-testing Google Glass for possible use on the battlefield.

More: eWeek, 9to5Google and Gigaom Research. Tweets: @tim. Thanks:@harrisonweber

Douglas MacMillan / Wall Street Journal:

Atlassian Valued at $3.3 Billion Selling Business Software Sans Salespeople — Atlassian, an Australian maker of online collaboration tools for businesses, is gunning for the same market as fast-growing startup Box Inc. And like Box, Atlassian is also now one of the world's …

More: VentureBeat and Gigaom Research. Tweets: @ramseychapin and @scottmaustin

Ina Fried / Re/code:

Apple's Damages Expert Makes Case for Why Company Due $2.19 Billion From Samsung — An Apple-hired damages expert on Tuesday told the jury that the iPhone maker is owed $2.19 billion in damages for infringing five patents between August 2011 and the end of 2013.

More: Wall Street Journal, The Verge, MacRumors, AppleInsider, Bloomberg and CNET

Paul Sawers / The Next Web:

Sesame Street now has its own dedicated video-on-demand service called Sesame GO — Breaking Bad fan? Sign-up to Netflix. Looking to stream more recent theatrical releases? Check out Amazon Instant Video. Kids addicted to Sesame Street? Well, there's a new kid on the VOD block just for that.

More: The Verge, VideoNuze Analysis, Electronista, Gigaom, Mobile Entertainment Feed, Wall Street Journal, Gizmodo and App Advice. See also Mediagazer

Mikey Campbell / AppleInsider:

Teen interest in ‘iWatch’ growing as iPhone dominates field, study says — Apple's iPhone continues to lead all competing devices in the important U.S. teen demographic, but the future spenders of America are exhibiting fast-growing interest in new product categories like the iWatch.

More: MacRumors and Fortune. Thanks:@mikeycampbell81

David Meyer / Gigaom:

How thin, flexible electronics will revolutionize everything from user interfaces to packaging — As our computing requirements change, the nature of the underlying electronics needs to change too. We're moving into an era of wearable gadgets that require flexibility and new user interfaces …

Josh Constine / TechCrunch:

Facebook Admits Users Are Confused About Privacy, Will Show More On-Screen Explanations — Facebook today offered reporters a deep dive on how it handles privacy and previewed some upcoming changes. The company revealed it does 80 trillion privacy checks per day on the backend to make sure data isn't wrongly exposed.

More: Re/code, SiliconBeat, Gigaom, The Switch, VentureBeat, Inside Facebook and AllFacebook

Alex Wilhelm / TechCrunch:

Ballmer, Not Nadella, Gave The Go-Ahead To Ship Office For iPad, Which Has Racked Up 12M Downloads — Update: I'm hearing that while Ballmer did intend to ship Office for iPad, it was Nadella who picked the date. This makes the below comment technically true, but perhaps slightly confusing.

More: CITEworld, Cult of Mac, ZDNet, Macworld, 9to5Mac, Ubergizmo, GeekWire and WinBeta

Tweets: @monkbent and @tomwarren

Mike Isaac / Re/code:

Reddit Execs Ellen Pao and Jena Donlin Get Serious About the Site's Business (Q&A) — Reddit is one of the biggest sites on the Web. Now it just needs to start making it rain. — Since 2005, the online community message board and link-sharing site has risen from an esoteric bulletin board service …

Tweets: @laurahazardowen

Nicole Perlroth / New York Times:

Hackers are breaching corporate networks increasingly via third-party devices and software — Hackers Lurking in Vents and Soda Machines — SAN FRANCISCO — They came in through the Chinese takeout menu. — Unable to breach the computer network at a big oil company …

More: Daily Dot and Gizmodo. Tweets: @jasonsack and @nicoleperlroth

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