--- description: How a Finnish security firm discovered the Heartbleed bug that's left vast numbers of Internet services vulnerable for more than two years title: How They Found the Heartbleed Bug image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- * [Business](/section/business/) ## Business Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close * [Tech](/tag/time-section-tech/) ## Tech Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close # How They Found Heartbleed by [Harry McCracken](/author/harry-mccracken/) ## Harry McCracken Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Apr 11, 2014 4:35 PM CUT by [Harry McCracken](/author/harry-mccracken/) ## Harry McCracken Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Apr 11, 2014 4:35 PM CUT Over at Vocativ, Eric Markowitz [has a good piece](http://www.vocativ.com/tech/hacking/behind-scenes-crazy-72-hours-leading-heartbleed-discovery/ "undefined") on how a Finnish security firm discovered the [Heartbleed bug](http://search.time.com/?site=time&q=heartbleed "undefined") that’s left vast numbers of Internet services utterly vulnerable for more than two years: --- > “” --- An engineer at Codenomicon, the firm in question, found the bug at the same time as a Google researcher, an amazing coincidence considering that it was introduced back in March 2012. The whole situation is chilling — not just because we don’t know who might have known about the bug and leveraged it to steal data, but also because it’s such a sobering reminder of how little we know about the software we depend on every day. There are other Heartbleeds out there; it’s just that nobody’s told us about them yet. [More Heartbleed coverage on TIME](http://search.time.com/?site=time&q=heartbleed "undefined") ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/59688/how-they-found-heartbleed/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/59688/how-they-found-heartbleed/"},"headline":"How They Found Heartbleed","datePublished":"2014-04-11T16:35:24.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T08:01:57.143Z","description":"How a Finnish security firm discovered the Heartbleed bug that's left vast numbers of Internet services vulnerable for more than two years","url":"https://time.com/59688/how-they-found-heartbleed/","keywords":["Tech","Technologizer","Security"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Harry McCracken","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/harry-mccracken/"}],"articleSection":"Business","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/business/","name":"Business"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-tech/","name":"Tech"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/59688/how-they-found-heartbleed/","name":"How They Found Heartbleed"}}]}] ```