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Message from CloudFare concerning Heartbleed (updated)

Posted on April 12, 2014 by Dissent

Email I received from CloudFare this morning:

You’re protected from the Heartbleed vulnerability because you have CloudFlare turned on for your website. We fixed the flaw on March 31 for all CloudFlare customers, a week before it was publicly announced.

Heartbleed (CVE-2014-0160, http://www.openssl.org/) is a flaw in OpenSSL, encryption software used by the vast majority of websites to protect sensitive information. This vulnerability in OpenSSL allows an attacker to reveal up to 64KB of memory to a connected client or server. This flaw could expose sensitive data such as passwords or usernames – even when you thought it was encrypted.

NO IMPACT ON CLOUDFLARE SERVICE. Our team has conducted a comprehensive security review to ensure our customers were not impacted. One concern is that an attacker had access to the exploit before March 31 since the flaw was present since December 2011. We’ve seen no evidence of this, but we’re proceeding as if it is a possibility.

PRIVATE KEY DATA. Our security and cryptographic team has been testing the possibility that private SSL key data may have been retrieved. We have been unable to replicate a situation where private SSL key data would leak. We have set up a challenge to see if others can exploit the bug. See more information on our blog:

http://blog.cloudflare.com/answering-the-critical-question-can-you-get-private-ssl-keys-using-heartbleed

(UPDATE: Two people who took their challenge have reportedly been able to obtain private keys . See http://www.theverge.com/us-world/2014/4/11/5606524/hacker-successfully-uses-heartbleed-to-retrieve-private-security-keys — Dissent)

NEW CERTIFICATES FOR EVERYONE. Even though we have not been able to use the exploit to leak public key data, we’re proceeding out of an abundance of caution. We’ve begun the process of reissuing and revoking the keys CloudFlare manages on behalf of our customers. To ensure that we don’t overburden the certificate authority resources given the scale at which CloudFlare operates, we are staging this process. We expect that it will be complete by early next week.

GENERAL RECOMMENDATIONS FOR SAFE WEB HYGIENE There are some precautions you can take to protect yourself from the Heartbleed bug.

1. GET CUSTOM CERTIFICATES ISSUED. If you’re using CloudFlare custom certificates, have your certificate authority reissue you a new certificate. After it is installed and confirmed working, revoke all previous certificates.

2. UPGRADE OPENSSL ON YOUR SERVER. While CloudFlare is protecting your server from receiving Heartbleed attacks, you should still upgrade to the latest version of OpenSSL as soon as possible. Get version 1.0.1g here:

https://www.openssl.org/.

If you can’t upgrade immediately, you can recompile OpenSSL with -DOPENSSL_NO_HEARTBEATS.

3. CHANGE PASSWORDS. Even with these fixes, we recommend that you change your password for CloudFlare and any other online services you may use. You should also consider enabling 2-factor authentication, which will help protect your account even if your password is compromised.

MORE INFORMATION AND FAQs. We have documented Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) here:

https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/articles/201660084-Update-on-the-Heartbleed-OpenSSL-Vulnerability

If you have further questions, please contact www.cloudflare.com/support

CloudFlare was one of the companies originally contacted by the researchers who discovered the bug and has been working closely to ensure that sites are protected. This is a serious issue for the Internet as a whole and, as we learn more details, we’ll continue to update you on actions you can take to protect your online presence.

Thanks again for your support!

The CloudFlare Team


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