Do you use a public Wifi anywhere?

[Trlsmn]

Non techies can stop reading here......

Firefox Add-on Firesheep Brings Hacking to the Masses

Firefox Add-on Firesheep Brings Hacking to the Masses - PCWorld

Firesheep targets 26 online services, and includes many popular online services such as Amazon, Facebook, Foursquare, Google, The New York Times, Twitter, Windows Live, Wordpress and Yahoo.

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[MrNiceGuy]

downloaded it, tested it, it works... but I have no reason to ever use it.

It's like hacking, but with a friendly GUI and allot less typing.

 

[egdinger]

There is a plug-in for firefox that detects firesheep being used. It's called blacksheep.

 

[Trlsmn]

The people that are inept about security will not be savvy enough to know to use it, the people that are savvy never had to worry about the problem to start with so this will be a problem for the vast majority of the people who are ignorant of most tech.

 

[VW_Factor]

This is a problem with non-encrypted logins from the places mentioned, like Facebook and junk. Its a fancy, easy to use packet sniffer.

Again, its not hacking either. Its snooping unencrypted information on open connections.

Best thing you can do, is use complicated passwords, and use a different password for each site / or services. Financial services you should use a different strong password for each one.

 

[drew]

Encryption is good. There should be no expectation of privacy or security if you use open public access points and don't use encryption. Just hope you're boring enough no one cares to see the data.

I've done some interactive demos where I've shown people what there google search is, what they transmitted on IM, and other things. Makes you rethink that fetish pron eh? Cryptography prevents this.

Like the article suggested a VPN will encrypt everything coming out of your computer. If you're doing that and find someone running firesheep, start making sheep noises. I'd also suggest some freelance karaoke of a fitting song YouTube - Fear Of The Dark - Iron Maiden too but that's not for everyone. When it comes to the old interweb, paranoia is good. There's a lot of bad people and tools to enable them including people's usage habits. .