The Latest in IT Security

Financial services firm GE Money has warned Australian customers against worldwide internet vulnerabilities, urging them to change online passwords after a bug surfaced this month hitting email systems, security firewalls and possibly, mobile phones. Developers rushed out patches to fix affected web servers when they disclosed the problem, which affected companies from Amazon.com Inc and Google Inc to Yahoo Inc. Yet pieces of vulnerable OpenSSL code can be found in several other locations, from email servers to ordinary PCs, phones and even security products, such as firewalls. The Sydney Morning Herald reported that financial websites run by GE Money, including the Myer Visa Card and Myer Card portals, as well as Coles Mastercard, were vulnerable to the Heartbleed security bug. Myer Visa Card and Coles Master Card online login pages have a security update that navigates to GE Money, which runs those financial websites, asking customers to change passwords.