The White House and U.S. intelligence agencies said on Friday that neither the National Security Agency nor any other part of the government was 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. Bloomberg cited two unnamed sources whom 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.