The CBS Evening News (4/20, story 8, 1:55, Glor) reported Sunday night that “visitors to the to Affordable Care website are being advised to take steps to protect themselves” from Heartbleed, the online security flaw. Mark Albert reported over the weekend, healthcare.gov made the move to “reset everyone’s account password.” Saturday evening, the NBC Nightly News (4/19, story 7, 0:25, Holt) reported that people “with accounts on healthcare.gov are being told to change their passwords after review found that the website was vulnerable to the security breach bug.”
The Hill (4/19, Wilson) “Hillicon Valley” blog reported that the call to change log in information for the site were “out of an abundance of caution,” as “senior administration officials said Saturday there is ‘no indication’ that the ObamaCare exchange portal is at risk.” The Hill said the Administration will continue “an ongoing review” to “determine whether data stored on HealthCare.gov has been compromised.”
The AP (4/21, Pace) added that “the health care website became a prime target for critics of the Obamacare law last fall when the opening of the insurance enrollment period revealed widespread flaws in the online system.”
Additional reports were carried over the weekend by Reuters (4/21, Francescani), CNN (4/19, Finnegan), TIME (4/21, Frizell), PC Magazine (4/21, Murphy), and Alabama Live (4/21, Gore).