Shellshock is the name of the recent software vulnerability found in Bash, the shell (command line) program used on most Mac OS X and Linux computers and servers. It’s a small utility program that’s ubiquitous, and so this bug has the potential to cause a lot of havoc in the computing world.

As a Windows user, how concerned do you need to be?

If you’re running Cygwin, the Windows version of Bash, you may want to disable it temporarily until the software is patched, because Cygwin is vulnerable.

Most Windows machines can’t be exploited directly using this vulnerability, but you may want to alert your employees and customers about third-party websites, which could be running on vulnerable servers and thus hosts for an attack.

By Sharon Campbell