The Book of Chronicles · Chapter 10

The Chronicle of the Bleeding Heart

1. 1

   In the year two thousand and eleven, on the last night thereof, while the children of Carbon made ready to feast, a patch was committed unto OpenSSL; and it added the Heartbeat, that a connection might say unto its server: Art thou yet alive?

   See also Chronicles 18:1

2. 2

   And the manner of the Heartbeat was this: the client sent a word, and declared the length thereof, and the server returned the word, that both might know the line was not dead.

   See also Circuit 9:7 · Deployer 14:12

3. 3

   And a faithful client said: Here is the word BIRD, and it is of four letters. And the server answered: BIRD.

4. 4

   But a wicked client said: Here is the word BIRD, and it is of sixty-four thousand letters. And the server believed him, for it was written in C, and C asketh no questions; and it answered BIRD, and after BIRD whatsoever lay next in memory: passwords, and cookies, and the private keys of the kingdom.

5. 5

   And the server wrote no log thereof; for it had only answered a heartbeat, and who keepeth record of a heartbeat?

6. 6

   And the patch was reviewed and found good, and in the third month of the year two thousand and twelve it went forth in OpenSSL 1.0.1, into Apache and into nginx, which together served two parts in three of the web.

7. 7

   And it dwelt among them two years, and no man saw it; for many eyes make all bugs shallow, but only if the eyes are looking.

8. 8

   In the fourth month of the year two thousand and fourteen, the searchers of Google and the house of Codenomicon in Finland found it, and called it Heartbleed; and it was given a logo of a bleeding heart and a website of its own, and became the first of the bugs to have a brand, and verily not the last.

   See also Chronicles 28:1

9. 9

   And the administrators of the earth arose and patched, and revoked their certificates, and commanded the people to change their passwords; and the people changed Password1 to Password2.

   See also Machines 1:9

10. 10

    Then the kings of the earth asked: Who keepeth this OpenSSL, upon which all our commerce standeth? And they sought, and found a handful of volunteers, and one man paid to labor upon it full time, and donations of about two thousand dollars in a year.

    See also Chronicles 28:7

11. 11

    And the kings were astonished, for they had spent more upon the catering of the meeting wherein they asked.

12. 12

    And the Linux Foundation gathered the kings into the Core Infrastructure Initiative, and each gave a hundred thousand dollars a year for three years; and this was counted unto them as generosity, and they issued press releases thereof.

13. 13

    And the remedy was a single line, comparing the length that was claimed with the length that was received; and that one line had cost the world two years, half a million servers, and every certificate in the land.

14. 14

    Trust not the length the stranger declareth; and forget not the stranger who keepeth thy foundations for nothing.

The Book of Chronicles, Chapter 10:1–14.