Heartbleed Attack – What it is and How Does it Work?

This paper aims to provide a detailed study on the Heartbleed attack covering the required topics for understanding the exploit. It is a critical bug in OpenSSL’s implementation of the TLS/DTLS heartbeat extension allowing attackers to read portions of the affected server’s memory, potentially revealing user’s data that was not intended to be revealed.

Key Pointers:

• Understanding what this vulnerability is and how it can be exploited.
• Soma important concepts covered to help understand the exploit procedure.
• Setting up a virtual environment and performing the exploit.
• Concluding the paper with required mitigations to prevent such attacks using this vulnerability