‘Heartbleed’-bug threat spreads to firewalls and beyond

By Around the Web

(Reuters) Hackers could crack email systems, security firewalls and possibly mobile phones through the “Heartbleed” computer bug, according to security experts who warned on Thursday that the risks extended beyond just Internet Web servers.

The widespread bug surfaced late on Monday, when it was disclosed that a pernicious flaw in a widely used Web encryption program known as OpenSSL opened hundreds of thousands of websites to data theft. Developers rushed out patches to fix affected web servers when they disclosed the problem, which affected companies from Amazon.com Inc and Google Inc to Yahoo Inc.

Yet pieces of vulnerable OpenSSL code can be found inside plenty of other places, including email servers, ordinary PCs, phones and even security products such as firewalls. Developers of those products are scrambling to figure out whether they are vulnerable and patch them to keep their users safe.

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