Canadian banks are not affected by the Heartbleed bug, according to its representative body.
According to CBC, the OpenSSL flaw is no threat to the bank websites in Canada. The Canadian Bankers Association, said: “The online banking applications of Canadian banks have not been affected by the Heartbleed bug. Canadians can continue to bank with confidence.”
“Banks have sophisticated security systems in place to protect customers’ personal and financial information, including encryption and other measures. As part of a normal course of business, the banks actively monitor their networks and continuously conduct routine maintenance to help ensure that online threats do not harm their servers or disrupt service to customers.”
Jag Bains, CTO of Vancouver-based DOSarrest, told IT Security Guru that the assertion seemed very light in detail and is suspect, considering that the bug has been in the wild for nearly two years.
“As there has been no defined methodology in determining the extent of a possible breach and effect so far, and the vulnerability has been in existence for nearly two years, more details need to be provided in how they were able to be secure their systems against the biggest internet security issue to date,” he said.
“Furthermore, the overarching claim seems to cover all of Canada’s banks, when each institution will have disparate IT systems, so this statement is disingenuous at best. It may come to pass that these institutions will get pilloried for these assertions in the next few days or weeks, but many organisations will be following suit to keep customer confidence high. The fallout remains to be seen.”
Fred Touchette, senior security analyst at AppRiver, commented on the line “banks actively monitor their networks and continuously conduct routine maintenance to help ensure that online threats do not harm their servers or disrupt service to customers”, saying Target did too. “So does everyone else. I’d much prefer to hear that it’s ok because they don’t use OpenSSL instead of this statement, but at least they’re confident,” he said.
Following the news of the flaw, the Canada Revenue Agency took the bold step on Wednesday of shutting down its public website until it can address the issue, according to CIO. The Canadian Minister of National Revenue, Kerry-Lynne D. Findlay wrote in a Twitter message on Wednesday that interest and penalties will not be applied to those filing 2013 tax returns after April 30th, the last date for filing the returns, for a period equal to the length of the service disruption.
