What is HTTP — CCA-F Exam Prep

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L1.02|What is HTTP
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Real story
A digital heart with a bleeding crack down the middle, leaking binary data (1s and 0s). Behind it, rows of server racks in red emergency lighting. The Heartbleed logo visible. Dark, urgent atmosphere.

Half a million servers. One bug. Every password exposed.

April 2014. A security researcher discovers a flaw in OpenSSL — the software that puts the S in HTTPS. The bug is called Heartbleed.

A single buffer overflow let attackers read the memory of any affected server. Passwords, private keys, session tokens — all leaking. No logs. No trace. No way to know if you'd been hit.

500,000 web servers. Two years undetected. The protocol that secures HTTP had a hole in it.