The internet is currently atwitter with talk about Heartbleed bug, an encryption fault which caused a horrific ripple effect in the OpenSSL system that put your passwords on sites like RedTube, & Yahoo.
Chris Parsons nearly predicted the CRA’s vulnerability just before they decided to shut down their tax websites, while some of his colleagues and followers criticized the Canadian Cyber Incident Response Centre (CCIRC) for not alerting the public sooner, when it was already obvious the CRA was using a vulnerable version of SSL. Chris discussed the potential ramifications of the CRA’s Heartbleed vulnerability with me:
“A significant amount of highly sensitive tax-related personal information is passed through CRA’s online service gateways. A third-party could have, potentially, accessed logins and passwords of Canadians or the private keys of CRA’s services. The former set of information would let that party log into CRA and impersonate the person in question. The latter set of data could let the third-party decrypt previously captured client-server information and, as a result, decode not just passwords and logins but also the tax data that individuals provided to CRA.”
First time that I’ve been quoted (extensively) in Vice!
Source: Heartbleed Ripped a Hole in the Internet | VICE Canada
Excited Pixels 