WormBase and the "Heartbleed" security issue

Recently, a serious security gap was identified in the software that provides the “secure” component of many websites. Called “Heartbleed“, this issue could possibly affect upwards of 2/3 of websites. Exploits of this issue leave no trace making it particularly vicious.

The WormBase website was also affected.

We have applied recommended security patches and are no longer vulnerable to this issue. We strongly encourage all registered users of WormBase to change their passwords.

Read more about Heartbleed on the NY Times or the original report documenting the issue.

Changes at WormBase

WormBase thanks Jonathan Hodgkin for years of superb community service handling genetic nomenclature. Tim Schedl will now serve as the genetic nomenclature coordinator and arbiter.

John Spieth, Tamberlyn Bieri and Phil Ozersky at the Washington University at St. Louis have retired from WormBase as of July 31. We thank them for more than a decade of tireless curation of C. elegans and other nematode sequence and gene models.