Following an announcement at the end of last week that it was looking closely at its systems in relation to the Heartbleed bug, BlackBerry said Sunday it’ll shortly be rolling out a patch for Android and iOS users of its popular BBM messaging app.
Put simply, Heartbleed can let hackers exploit a widespread server vulnerability and gather a plethora of personal information in the process – passwords and credit card numbers included – though many companies have moved swiftly to update their systems since news of the bug broke last week.
BBM update on the way
Speaking to Reuters over the weekend, BlackBerry senior vice president Scott Totzke said that while “the bulk” of the company’s products have no connection with systems affected by Heartbleed, two products – Secure Work Space corporate email and BBM for Android and iOS – do require updates as they could be compromised through either Wi-Fi connections or carrier networks.
Totzke said the mobile company’s security technology made the risk of attack “extremely small” and that it’s OK to carry on using the apps without the update, which is expected to be rolled out by Friday.
BBM launched for Android and iOS last October, with the Waterloo, Ontario company announcing a couple of months later it’d picked up an impressive 40 million users in its first 60 days of availability on the two platforms.
Heartbleed
It seems there are currently no known incidents involving Heartbleed-related attacks despite security experts’ recent revelation that the vulnerability has been in existence for a couple of years.
For more information on how you can protect yourself, and whether you should change your passwords for services you use, be sure to take a moment to check out DT’s comprehensive lists of affected apps and websites.
