Security

Heartbleed and other heartaches

As has been reported extensively already, OpenSSL just fixed a serious vulnerability, dubbed Heartbleed. OpenSSL is used in a variety of products used on the internet, including Opera products and servers. We want to share with you how this vulnerability has affected Opera. (tl;dr: Some internal servers, but no products or Opera user accounts.)

The Presto engine used in Opera 12 and older does use OpenSSL, but not the features of OpenSSL which contained the vulnerability. Hence Presto is not vulnerable, on any platform. This includes Opera Mini and Opera Mail, which use Presto. Opera Mini encryption between the client and proxy is also unaffected. Opera 14 and higher runs on Chromium, Desktop versions do not use OpenSSL. Android versions do, but not the features which contained the vulnerability. Coast by Opera only uses OpenSSL for certification information, not any parts of the vulnerable code. So the short version is that Opera products are not vulnerable*. Opera will of course use plugins, and may also use or call system functions or libraries, so even if you are using Opera, you should still make sure your system is secured and up to date.

Opera Software also hosts a host of hosts, and many of these ran on vulnerable server versions. However, none of the public facing login systems used the offending parts of OpenSSL for encryption (see update below). We have gone through our servers and upgraded them, including changing certificates. We are in the process of revoking the old certificates, and we have changed all internal passwords. User passwords used on our services have not been exposed, including for Opera Mini, but passwords for third party services like blog comments and forums, may have been exposed. You may want to change those passwords, including for any sites where those passwords may have been reused.

* No absolutes without caveats. Even though Presto does not use any vulnerable parts of OpenSSL, the standalone autoupdater for Opera 12 on Windows does. However, the autoupdater will only connect to our server, and close the connection if the certificate does not validate, so the certificate holders are the only ones who can abuse it. If someone should have stolen our certificate with a heartbleed attack against our servers, they might potentially use it against the autoupdater. The autoupdater runs in a separate process, and doesn’t have much memory to leak, but might potentially leak system information in such a case, such as local username on Windows machines. We aim to get an update out soon (see update 2 below). An attack on the autoupdate mechanism itself would still have to bypass additional protections.

Update:
apps.opera.com had some login pages for app developers which were vulnerable. These were fixed quickly and quietly, and initially slipped under my radar. App developers are advised to update their apps.opera.com passwords. The site team will handle any further communication with affected developers.

Update 2:
Opera 12.17 for Windows is now out.

<3
 |
.
  .

User comments



Opera

You deserve a better browser

Opera's free VPN, Ad blocker, and Flow file sharing. Just a few of the must-have features built into Opera for faster, smoother and distraction-free browsing designed to improve your online experience.

Download now