www.ThereseMartin.net

Hmmm……………………………………..interesting… (just kidding)

I was thinking of writing a post about Firefox’s extension Firesheep, but these videos/post pretty much sum everything up. Learn how it works and protect yourself, which is simply avoid using public wifi . That’s an old “warning”, you’ve heard it before and sidejacking has been around for the last 3 years or so..blah blah blah..BUT with Firesheep almost ANYONE can hack into your stuff.

Firesheep works like a charm, it’s easy to use and if you love hacking other people’s stuff, you’ll love it. You can thank software developer, Eric Butler. Not that I’m promoting this extension, I think it’s a huge security threat for a lot of people, but needless to say, I’m really impressed. It really works. for real. So think twice (or more) before you decide using the “free” wifi on your area, you might get a lot more than you’ve bargained for.

Here’s a simple and concise explanation from PCWorld:

“Firesheep is basically a packet sniffer that can analyze all the   unencrypted  Web traffic on an open Wi-Fi connection between a Wi-Fi router and the personal computers on the same network. The extension waits for someone to log in to any of the 26 sites listed in Firesheep’s database. When you log in to Amazon, for example, your browser’s Amazon-specific cookie communicates with the site and contains personally identifying information such as your user name and an Amazon session number ID.

As your browser swaps cookie information back and forth with the Website a third party can hijack that communication and capture info including your user name and session ID. Typically, the cookie will not contain your password. But even without your password, the fact that Firesheep has snagged your session cookie means that a hacker can, at least in theory, access your account and gain virtually unrestricted access. If the hacker got your Yahoo Mail cookie they could send an e-mail, if it was Facebook they may be able to post a message and so on. Any operations that require your password, however, such as accessing your credit card information on Amazon should not be possible using Firesheep.”

Be safe and have a great weekend! ~xoxo Therese