jmke

The recent appearance of the Firesheep plugin for Firefox has raised concerns over the lack of security for browsing sessions conducted at public hotspots, so the release of FireShepherd to stop the digital eavesdroppers is welcome news. Firesheep (it’s the naughty one) lets anyone using the browser plugin snoop out login credentials for commonly used web sites like Facebook and Twitter. Using this information strangers can access private accounts to do whatever they wish, as the web site being hacked thinks they are the owner of the account.
More News From GigaOm

While the developer behind Firesheep claims the tool was released to demonstrate the vulnerability of private information at public Wi-Fi hotspots, it has been downloaded over 200,000 times. Unfortunately, Firesheep works because many web sites do not use the more secure HTTPS, which makes individual sessions secure even over public networks. No doubt some of those now using the tool to snoop do not have the same good intentions as the developer. FireShepherd (the nice one) kills any Firesheep sessions running over unsecured hotspots. Unfortunately, FireShepherd is a Windows program, which leaves users of other systems unprotected.

http://www.nytimes.com/external/giga...erd-33115.html

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