Heartbleed is a notable vulnerability in the OpenSSL library. Which of the following is the name given to this flaw?

Heartbleed is a notable vulnerability in the OpenSSL library. Which of the following is the name given to this flaw?

• A. Heartbleed Bug
• B. Shellshock
• C. POODLE
• D. Spectre

Answer: (A)

Heartbleed is the name given to a flaw in OpenSSL’s TLS heartbeat feature. The vulnerability happened because the code didn’t properly validate the length of the data in a heartbeat request, so an attacker could trick a server into replying with memory content from its own process. That memory could contain sensitive information like private keys, session tokens, and user data, potentially exposing large amounts of information with each heartbeat. It affected certain OpenSSL versions and was fixed in later releases. The other names listed refer to different security issues: Shellshock is a Bash vulnerability, POODLE targets SSL 3.0 padding, and Spectre covers CPU speculative-execution flaws.

Heartbleed is the name given to a flaw in OpenSSL’s TLS heartbeat feature. The vulnerability happened because the code didn’t properly validate the length of the data in a heartbeat request, so an attacker could trick a server into replying with memory content from its own process. That memory could contain sensitive information like private keys, session tokens, and user data, potentially exposing large amounts of information with each heartbeat. It affected certain OpenSSL versions and was fixed in later releases. The other names listed refer to different security issues: Shellshock is a Bash vulnerability, POODLE targets SSL 3.0 padding, and Spectre covers CPU speculative-execution flaws.