On September 24th researchers at Red Hat uncovered a dangerous error on all Unix, OSX and iOS platforms, this bug was dubbed “Shellshock”.
In short it permits an attacker to gain total control over a machine, and even use that machine to infect others. However it’s not just computers that may be affected by Shellshock. Any devices that link to the internet, e.g. broadband routers and network switches, are also at risk. So even if you only use Windows devices, you still need to make sure that you aren’t vulnerable through, for example, your website host.
If you own a website or a cloud based private server it is recommended that you contact the hosting agency and see how they are dealing with this issue, and if you have an in-house server it would be wise to get your IT specialists to check if it is vulnerable. If you have no in-house IT staff then you should seek out a specialist to run a check for you.
