History

The heartbeat of the internet

It’s 1998. The internet is slow and expensive. Most people browse the web with Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer 4, if they even have internet access at all. Shopping online is novel and risky, as very few websites use encryption. But the internet’s vast potential – and its risks – are coming into focus. OpenSSL is one of the first open source projects to provide highly reliable data privacy and security tools that are available to anyone, anywhere.

By 2014, usage of OpenSSL has grown exponentially, but the software is still being maintained by just a few developers. They receive a worrisome email: a bug has been discovered. A half-million websites using OpenSSL are vulnerable. Government records are compromised, banking systems are impacted, user accounts on popular email platforms are hacked, and companies race to install patches before their most critical data is stolen.

This bug – a few lines of errant code that slipped into OpenSSL unnoticed – sends such shockwaves through the internet community that the bug is given its own name: Heartbleed.

At that moment, the world realized how much of our global data infrastructure was reliant on OpenSSL and a handful of people with almost no funding. It was a defining moment in internet history and the impetus for creating the OpenSSL Foundation.

The OpenSSL Foundation has grown and evolved since its founding in 2014. Today, with 5.5 billion people online, it is helping to provide data privacy and security tools that benefit more people than ever before. Learn more about what we do.