The Banyan Theory Blog

It’s been a little over a month since the Hearbleed bug was revealed. In case you missed it, I wrote an article telling you what you needed to know regarding your website and your Banyan Theory account login — mainly that they were not affected.

Now that the dust has settled, I’d like to explain how the bug works and how important it is that you change your passwords on other sites that were affected.

If you use Internet Explorer to browse the web, be aware that there is a dangerous new code-execution vulnerability. Microsoft has not issued a fix yet, making this a zero-day exploit (as in, zero days between the discovery of the vulnerability and the first attack).

All versions of Internet Explorer are vulnerable (6 through 11).

On Monday April 7, a new vulnerability called Heartbleed was revealed in OpenSSL, a software library widely used to protect websites served over HTTPS. The good news: the websites and apps we host were not impacted. The bad news: there are a great many websites and online services that were vulnerable.

Here’s what you need to know:

Here's an interesting blog topic for our insurance agents today: China's largest travel agency will be offering smog insurance for their travelers. Claims can be filed for the portion of their vacation spoiled by severe smog in certain cities in China.

In its most basic form, here’s how a phishing scam works:

1. A scammer emails you a link
2. You click on the link
3. You give the scammer your username and password

Sound like something you’d never fall for? Read on to be sure.