Welcome back, my greenhorn hackers! In recent weeks, the Heartbleed vulnerability of OpenSSL has been dominating the information security headlines. This vulnerability enables an attacker to extract data from the server's memory that may contain authentication credentials, cookies, the servers private key, and personally identifiable info (PII) that could be used for identity theft. As a result, websites around the world have been scrambling to close this hole. Fortunately for us, many still have not, and many may never be closed. Basically, OpenSSL is an encryption library used in HTTPS (secure HTTP). The idea is that any data traveling over this secured version of HTTP should be secure and encrypted. During communication, OpenSSL uses a "heartbeat" that echoes back data to verify that the data was received correctly. It's kind of like one machine telling the other, "Yes, I got that data and you can send more now." The Heartbleed vulnerabi...