NSA role in exploiting ‘Heartbleed’ bug denied

washington — The White House and US intelligence agencies said on Friday neither the National Security Agency (NSA) nor any other part of the government were aware before this month of the “Heartbleed” bug, denying a report that the spy agency exploited the glitch in widely used Web encryption technology to gather intelligence.

The White House, the NSA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued statements after Bloomberg reported that the NSA was aware of the bug for at least two years and exploited it in order to obtain passwords and other basic information used in hacking operations. The Bloomberg report cited two unnamed sources it said were familiar with the matter.

The Heartbleed bug is considered one of the most serious Internet security flaws to be uncovered in recent years.

“Reports that NSA or any other part of the government were aware of the so-called Heartbleed vulnerability before April 2014 are wrong,” White House National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said in a statement.

“This administration takes seriously its responsibility to help maintain an open, interoperable, secure and reliable Internet,” Hayden added.

The discovery of Heartbleed by researchers with Google Inc and a small security firm, Codenomicon, prompted the United States Homeland Security Department to advise businesses on Tuesday to review their servers. —