public wifi warning
robin aka georgiawebgurl
something to be aware of. Of course, public is, well, public. ;-)
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Anytime you’re using an open Wi-Fi connection, anyone can swiftly
access some of your most private, personal information and
correspondence (i.e. direct messages, Facebook mail/chat)— at the
click of a button. And you will have no idea.
This is how it works. If a site is not secure, it keeps track of
you through a cookie (more formally referenced as a session) which
contains identifying information for that website. The tool
[firesheep] effectively grabs these cookies and lets you masquerade
as the user. </p> <p>Apparently many social network sites are not
secured, beyond the big two, Foursquare, Gowalla are also vulnerable.
Moreover, to give you a sense of Firesheep’s scope, the extension is
built to identify cookies from Amazon.com, Basecamp, bit.ly, Cisco,
CNET, Dropbox, Enom, Evernote, Facebook, Flickr, Github, Google,
HackerNews, Harvest, Windows Live, NY Times, Pivotal Tracker,
Slicehost, tumblr, Twitter, WordPress, Yahoo, Yelp. And that’s just
the default setting— anyone can write their own plugins, according to
the post.
and to protect yourself (a little at least) in Firefox
(extension Force TLS) will encrypt your data
http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/25/firesheep/
robin
aka georgiawebgurl
http://www.contentdivergent.blogspot.com
univ. of georgia libraries