Apply Heartbleed patch to your Hostgator dedicated server

Since you stumbled on this article, you must already be aware of the Heartbleed security vulnerability that affects a large number of internet websites.  The target audience for this article is to administrators of Dedicated servers on Hostgator or any other provider.

Identify if your server is affected by Heartbleed

1. Visit the detection tool website at http://filippo.io/Heartbleed
2. Enter the address to your website
3. Review the output, is your site affected?

Patch your server via SSH

If your server is affected by Heartbleed, the openssl package on your server needs to be updated.

1. SSH to your server
2. Identity if you have the patched openssl package by running the command: rpm -q –changelog openssl|head
   1. If the output contains CVE-2014-0160 that means you have the patched version.  The reason why the detection tool found your site vulnerable is because you need to reboot your server.
   2. If the output does NOT contain CVE-2014-0160, run the command: yum update openssl to download and install the patch
   3. Reboot your server
3. Once your server has been rebooted, run the detection tool once again to ensure that the patch was successful

Let me know if you have any other questions!