Data Security Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Data Security - Essay Example In case, the server is online, it transmits that signal straight back to the computer, letting us enjoy secure communications. Both the computer and the server send out heartbeats during regular intervals to ensure that both the user and the server i.e. the service aren’t offline (Kerner 2014). Heartbleed exploits this â€Å"heartbeat† by sending out, a kind of heartbeat signal to servers that is malicious in nature. That malicious heartbeat more or less tricks the server into sending a random amount of its memory to the user who sent the malicious heartbeat. A random collection of email addresses, usernames and passwords can be enclosed in that memory. Some of those records troublingly, could belong to the company running that server. This affords hackers with a method of infiltrating and exploiting information across the Internet. The Shellshock issue is a sample of ACE (arbitrary code execution) vulnerability. Classically, ACE vulnerability attacks are carried out on running programs and entail an extremely advanced understanding of the internals of assembly language, code execution and memory layout—the kind of attack that calls for an expert, to be concise (Sampathkumar, Balasubramani 2014). The attacker employed an ACE vulnerability to run a program granting them an easy way of dominating the targeted machine. This is accomplished by means of running a "shell". A shell is a command-line where commands can be executed or entered. The Shellshock vulnerability is a big concern since it eliminates the necessity for specialized knowledge and in turn offers a simple (unfortunately, very basic) means of taking control of another computer or even a web server to make it run code. The attack seemingly looked to have been triggered by a malicious computer code referred to as malware, according to people familiar with such matters. Some people suggested, a probable Russian or