A month after the Heartbleed vulnerability was disclosed , a cybersecurity researcher estimates that around 300,000 servers remain exposed.
The revelation was made by security researcher Robert David Graham, via the blog of the research group Errata Security. The number of 300,000 exposed servers was revealed through a global scan of the Internet conducted by Errata members.
According to the scan, a total of 1.5 million servers worldwide use the OpenSSL feature that allows the Heartbleed bug to operate. Of this total, 318,239 systems remain vulnerable to it.
However, as explained, this number only counts confirmed cases, while there may be systems that were not counted either due to some spam blocking they were using or due to some particular OpenSSL configuration.
The number is alarming as the damage Heartbleed can cause is significant. Although large organizations have rushed to "shield" their servers against the threat, the damage can still come from servers used by less technologically advanced services and organizations.
It is worth remembering that once a server is vulnerable to attacks, anyone can use Heartbleed to obtain personal passwords, security keys, or even gain full control of a section of the website.
