Heartbleed has now established itself as being the Internet’s biggest security threats, but it has been around for two whole years and was only recently encountered by the masses. Every corporation and organization online is now having to scramble to eliminate the vulnerability. The bug can gain access to your information and passwords, but luckily there are a number of simple precautions one can take to combat this tricky Internet beast.
The fact that this vulnerability has existed since December of 2011 really got me thinking. I found myself asking: how could this potentially detrimental bug be incubating in our system for that long?
After considering this question, it finally hit me… the Internet is freakin’ massive! I immediately hopped on Google and typed “vastness of the Internet.” Then, “The Internet is Big,”Massive Internet,” and subsequently went down a crazy tangent investigating the web’s history and the unsung heroes of the Internet… but anyways! There’s a lot of stuff out there.
In terms of information, it has been estimated that our brains have the potential to hold between one to 10 terabytes. Google has estimated that the Internet is home to around 5 million terabytes. That means, it would take over one million people with 5 terabytes of brain-memory each to ‘store’ the still growing Internet!
That last part about the Internet’s growth is what really blows my mind. Just like our constantly expanding universe, the Internet is continuously experiencing growth. The human population creates, modifies, copies, moves, and attempts to erase things online all the time.
With the growth the Internet has undergone, it’s not surprising that a bug like Heartbleed can go unnoticed for so long. Being so big, one needs to understand that it can’t all be checked and monitored. The Internet, just like the real world, is full of a lot of good and a lot of bad. We simply have to do the best we can sorting it all out. The Internet is constantly growing and adapting to best work for humanity.
No wonder it is so easy to lose focus and end up watching trailers for movies you’ll never see instead. Not that I just did that…
What am I even doing? 