For those who might believe the Heartbleed virus is dead and buried, think again. There's a really good reason why the security experts from all over the world came together in a bid to control the spread of the Heartbleed bug, but that won't be enough as a huge part of the Internet would still be infected.
The crazy thing about this is that it is not entirely possible to tell which part of the Internet is infected. So far, since the bug was located and announced to the world, a scan by security firm Errata turned up 600,000 vulnerable servers, but within a mere 3 months after Heartbleed was made public, only 318,239 servers are still up and running with the infection.
Bear in mind that Errata's scan doesn't cover all servers on the Internet. However, the company can confirm that all the major ones are safe, for now.
Strangely enough, after so many servers being updated to address the issue, the remaining servers are all but stuck in limbo. Up to this day, there are still nearly 300,000 servers with the infection, and that pose a serious threat for the Internet and we the people who use it.
The threat is real, and despite being known, it appears the bug will live on inside thousands of servers for years to come.
The reason for so many servers with the Heartbleed bug still being active could be due to age. Some servers are operational but no longer maintained, so Internet users should consider some strict security measures. For example, don't log-in to a website that hasn't been updated in a long time and confirmed that they have been patched against Heartbleed.
Furthermore, Internet users must adopt the task of using a different password for every website. This way, if one website is compromised, attackers won't be able to use that password to gain access to other accounts.
Yes, remembering several different passwords is a difficult task, but that's fine because you don't have to remember them. Web browser plug-ins such as Lastpass, makes life on the Internet so much easier.
