It's a good day to be an Apple user. Dire news about a security flaw named Heartbleed has been circulating around the Internet for the last week, but the Cupertino company said in a statement to Re/code today that you have little to worry about as regards iOS, OS X, and Apple's "key web services." All were apparently unaffected.
As the statement says, "Apple takes security very seriously. iOS and OS X never incorporated the vulnerable software and key web-based services were not affected." The vulnerable software in question is the open-source OpenSSL, which the vast majority of the internet uses to establish (normally) secure connections.
How vast? The Heartbleed bug has allegedly affected around 66 percent of the internet, leading security researcher Bruce Schneier to call it "catastrophic. "On a scale of 1 to 10, this is an 11," Schneier says. Heartbleed uses OpenSSL to steal important information like usernames and passwords, and yes, even if the site in question has a little lock in the search bar, your information may still be at risk.
While Apple's own services weren't affected, you should probably still change your passwords if you use any of the potentially affected sites (and in all likelihood, you do). Mashable has a comprehensive list of them, along with reports from each site regarding their courses of action.
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