In the last week a security flaw known as Heartbleed has become news across the Internet.

The Heartbleed Bug is a serious vulnerability in the popular OpenSSL cryptographic software library. This weakness allows stealing the information protected, under normal conditions, by the SSL/TLS encryption used to secure the Internet. SSL/TLS provides communication security and privacy over the Internet for applications such as web, email, instant messaging (IM) and some virtual private networks (VPNs).

The Heartbleed bug allows anyone on the Internet to read the memory of the systems protected by the vulnerable versions of the OpenSSL software. This compromises the secret keys used to identify the service providers and to encrypt the traffic, the names and passwords of the users and the actual content. This allows attackers to eavesdrop on communications, steal data directly from the services and users and to impersonate services and users. [Heartbleed.com]

Although the security flaw effected a large portion of internet services (estimated at two-thirds of all websites), Tradevine does not use OpenSSL and was therefor not affected.

However, a number of the services Tradevine partners with were potentially at risk.

Each partner has since patched the security flaw, and Tradevine have taken steps (such as updating passwords) to insure Tradevine, and our customers data are completely secure.

For more information on the Heartbleed security flaw, visit the Heartbleed.com website.