As we’ve reported, hundreds of cloud providers were vulnerable to the Heartbleed bug in OpenSSL even days after the vulnerability was widely publicized. Looking at the latest data pulled this morning, much progress has been made and there are only 42 Cloud Security services that are vulnerable to Heartbleed. For these services, user data, passwords, and private keys for these services can be stolen using a simple exploit.

1. 90% of Impacted Cloud Providers Still Haven’t Updated Certificates
1 Week After Heartbleed
As we’ve reported, hundreds of cloud providers were vulnerable to the Heartbleed
bug in OpenSSL even days after the vulnerability was widely publicized. Looking at
the latest data pulled this morning, much progress has been made and there are only
42 Cloud Security services that are vulnerable to Heartbleed. For these services,
user data, passwords, and private keys for these services can be stolen using a simple
exploit.
However, more alarming today is the number of cloud services that have not fully
addressed their past vulnerability. After patching SSL, the next step cloud providers
must take is to reissue their certificates. As reported by CloudFlare, Heartbleed can be
used by an attacker to access private keys and impersonate a website. Since
Heartbleed exploits don’t leave a trace in server logs, cloud providers must assume
their private keys have been compromised even if they don’t have any evidence of
them being stolen.
Certificate updates trail Heartbleed patching
Most websites have patched SSL but they are reissuing and revoking certificates at a
much slower pace. Netcraft reported that only 30,000 websites (out of more than
500,000) reissued new certificates by the end of last week, and even fewer have
revoked their certificates. While not completely eliminating the risk of a
man-in-the-middle attack (MITM) this is a critical step in reducing the risk of these
attacks.
Skyhigh is tracking certificate updates across cloud providers and as of this morning
only 13.3% of Cloud Security service providers affected by Heartbleed have updated
their certificates. A smaller percentage have both reissued and revoked their
certificates, making them vulnerable to impersonation in a phishing scam or
man-in-the-middle attack. Most certificate authorities have agreed to replace
certificates for free, but there are complaints they aren’t prepared for the volume of
certificates that need to be reissued.

2. Already we’re seeing that Heartbleed has exposed not just a vulnerability in SSL but
vulnerabilities in the way we approach security. According to security researcher
Bruce Schneier:
“We’ve learned how hard the human aspects of a security system are to coordinate.
We’re learning that we don’t have the infrastructure necessary to quickly revoke
millions of certificates and issue new ones. We’re learning that some of our critical
open-source software is maintained by volunteers who have busy lives, and that often
no one else is evaluating that software’s security. We’re learning how complicated the
process of disclosing a vulnerability of this magnitude is.”
Cleaning up and determining your exposure
Aside from critical infrastructure your company uses, corporate IT departments are
being asked to quantify their exposure. With over 96% of companies using cloud
services impacted by Heartbleed, the chances that your sensitive data was vulnerable
is extremely high. Skyhigh has already provided our customers with the cloud
security services they use that were impacted, and we’re extending those audits to
any company for free.
Author :
Lauren Ellis is a research analyst covering the technology industry’s top trends &
topics, focusing on Cloud Security, Cloud Computing, Data Loss Prevention etc.,