Thomas Fuchs
Hi, I'm Thomas Fuchs. I'm the author of Zepto.js, of script.aculo.us, and I'm a Ruby on Rails core alumnus. With Amy Hoy I'm building cheerful software, like Noko Time Tracking and Every Time Zone and write books like Retinafy.me.
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Heartbleed exploit tl;dr

April 8th, 2014

OpenSSL had a bug for several years which allowed attackers to untraceably read all your SSL traffic and some server memory.

If you’re like me and have better things to do than reinvent the fix-wheel and you’re all like “WTFBBQ TL;DR” here’s the absolute minimum what anyone who runs a web server with SSL must do.

NO, NONE OF THESE STEPS ARE OPTIONAL.

  • Update OpenSSL to 1.0.1g. This is required before you do anything else.
  • Recompile anything that’s statically linked against OpenSSL. In many instances, web server software like Nginx is statically linked and must be recompiled. For example, if your Ruby is statically linked to OpenSSL, it’s recompile time!
  • Reboot the server. This must be done before issuing new certificates.
  • Create a new private key and CSR and get a new SSL certificate. You will need to revoke the old SSL certificate. (If you’re on Godaddy, use their “rekey” function. The old cert will be revoked automatically after 72 hours). Don’t forget to install your new cert.
  • Change any server passwords. These may have been read by an attacker as they are in server memory. It’s not a bad idea to issue new server SSH hostkeys as well.
  • Change any and all passwords and tokens of APIs you use. As server memory may have been compromised, an attacker could access the APIs as if they where you. Not good.
  • If you’re using cookie-based sessions in Rails (or similar environments) you must switch to a new encryption secret. Your current secret may have been compromised, allowing attackers to log in as anyone to your service. Unfortunately this means all your users will have to log in again.
  • Ask your users to change their passwords. As this security issue means that server memory may have been compromised as well as past traffic could be decrypted, passwords should be considered to be compromised.

Whew.

There’s an optional step, which I highly recommend while you’re at it—get your SSL configuration into shape and enable PFS and HSTS (and test it!). It just takes a minute if you’re on Nginx.

If you have anything to add, please email me directly and I’ll update this post.