laurelrusswurm

Making sense of Heartbleed

laurelrusswurm at

I've changed my Identi.ca password.
Have you?

I've been told that this XKCD comic https://m.xkcd.com/1354/ explains Heartbleed.  It might be a miracle of clarity to tech folks, but to us non-tech people, it pretty much says "blah-blah-blah-blah".

The thing is, Heartbleed is just as dangerous to non-tech people as it iis to techies, because we are all using computers these days-- even my 83 year old Dad.   And while tech folks have some hope of dismissing the boatloads of misinformation floating about (like Mashable's implication that Pinterest had anything to fear from Heartbleed) non-tech folks have no idea. 

That;s why I wrote "Heartbleed and Passwords" in my techDITZ blog.
http://techditz.russwurm.org/blogs/2014/04/12/heartbleed-and-passwords/

Please share with non-tech family & friends if you think it might help.  I have used another XKCD comic in my article, but since I understand it, probably some of my readers will, too.  At least somewhat :)

#Hearbleed #XKCD #techDITZ

Tobias Diekershoff likes this.

>Ordinary people can’t fix the Heartbleed problem.  It can only be repaired (or patched)  by the people running SSL websites & servers.

Uh, wut? Ordinary people are running ssl websites and servers (namely the pump on nginx I'm using right now which was pretty easy to patch thanks to the kind Debian folk :)) Tee hee, not to dickwave or anything (lol, 'specially about this!) but if we were to have a village idiot contest,I'd so win....I'm pretty ordinary (if that).

aether at 11 years ago

jrobb likes this.


I *did* mention the EFF's "Bleeding Heart Club" link in the bit where I mentioned ordinary people running servers ;)

When I talk about "ordinary people", I mean the people who don't know what a server is.  If my family and friends IRL are anything to go by, that's most of the people in the world.  

*You* would definitely fall into my definition of a techie :)  

laurelrusswurm at 11 years ago

X11R5 likes this.