Check Point Software Technologies, a worldwide leader in securing the Internet, have announced that its network security products offer multiple protections from the Heartbleed vulnerability, providing for the security of customers’ clients, servers and the integrity of their network data.
Check Point network security products are not susceptible to Heartbleed exploits as the company utilises a non-vulnerable version of OpenSSL. The company also provided multiple protections against attacks leveraging the Heartbleed bug that include:
* Check Point’s implementation of HTTPS inspection that automatically prevents Heartbleed traffic. This was first introduced in 2011 with R75.20.
* Check Point released IPS protections to detect and block exploits from Heartbleed, on 9 April, 2014.
“The Heartbleed vulnerability is a critical and far-reaching security threat that potentially exposes sensitive personal and business information to remote hackers. Check Point’s products provide multiple elements of protection against Heartbleed. First, our network security products are not vulnerable to this threat as Check Point uses a non-vulnerable version of OpenSSL.
“Second, our HTTPS inspection inherently prevents Heartbleed traffic. Finally, our timely IPS protection will detect and block attempts to exploit this vulnerability,” says Doros Hadjizenonos, sales manager for Check Point South Africa.
Additional Information on Heartbleed:
* Heartbleed.com describes the vulnerability as: “The Heartbleed Bug is a serious vulnerability in the popular OpenSSL cryptographic software library. The Heartbleed bug allows anyone on the Internet to read the memory of the systems protected by the vulnerable versions of the OpenSSL software.
” This compromises the secret keys used to identify the service providers and to encrypt the traffic, the names and passwords of the users and the actual content. This allows attackers to eavesdrop on communications, steal data directly from the services and users and to impersonate services and users.
* The National Vulnerability Database (NVD) Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures entry describes CVE-2014-0160, aka “Heartbleed” as: “The (1) TLS and (2) DTLS implementations in OpenSSL 1.0.1 before 1.0.1g do not properly handle Heartbeat Extension packets, which allows remote attackers to obtain sensitive information from process memory via crafted packets that trigger a buffer over-read, as demonstrated by reading private keys … aka the Heartbleed bug.”
“The Heartbleed vulnerability is so worrisome because of the pervasive use of OpenSSL and the fact that consumers often do not employ password best-practices, opening themselves to credential theft. Further, enterprises need to worry not only about the loss of customer account information, but also the compromise of employee credentials, as well as the exploitation of vulnerable network devices utilising OpenSSL,” says John Grady, research manager of security products and services at IDC.
