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NSA reportedly exploited Heartbleed for years, leaving us all at risk

Updated Apr 11th, 2014 3:29PM EDT
NSA Heartbleed

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The odds are good that no one will be surprised to learn that the National Security Agency knew about the Heartbleed OpenSSL vulnerability that affected 66% of the entire Internet at the time of its discovery. The allegation that the NSA used the security hole itself to spy on targets might not be terribly shocking either. What is pretty surprising — and appalling — however, is the fact that Bloomberg is reporting the NSA knew about the huge vulnerability for “at least two years” and did nothing, leaving us all at risk.

More details can be found in Bloomberg’s report, which is linked below in our source section.

Head here for more on Heartbleed and instructions on what to do if you might be affected. A plugin that can alert you when you visit sites that are still impacted by Heartbleed can be found here.

Zach Epstein
Zach Epstein Executive Editor

Zach Epstein has been the Executive Editor at BGR for more than 10 years. He manages BGR’s editorial team and ensures that best practices are adhered to. He also oversees the Ecommerce team and directs the daily flow of all content. Zach first joined BGR in 2007 as a Staff Writer covering business, technology, and entertainment.

His work has been quoted by countless top news organizations, and he was recently named one of the world's top 10 “power mobile influencers” by Forbes. Prior to BGR, Zach worked as an executive in marketing and business development with two private telcos.