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Firefox Extension Makes Social-Network ID Spoofing Trivial
Orome1 writes "A simple-to-use Firefox plugin presented yesterday at Toorcon in San Diego has hit the security world with the realization that squabbles about Facebook's changing privacy settings and various privacy breaches simply miss the point. 'When it comes to user privacy, SSL is the elephant in the room,' said Eric Butler, the developer of the extension in question, dubbed Firesheep. By installing and running it, anyone can 'sniff out' the unencrypted HTTP sessions currently allowing users on that network segment to access social networks, online services and other website requiring a login, and simply hijack them and impersonate the user."
I don't dispute author's work or goals (I've been using SSH tunneling on public WiFi for years to prevent just this) but he should have mentioned that clicking on information you gathered (and logging in as another user without their concent) is very likely against federal laws in US (and likely most other locations). Just gathering this information can likely be argued to be illegal as well (wiretapping?)
So be careful where you click..
here: http://codebutler.com/firesheep
They apparently call it "sidejacking", i.e. sniffing other users cookies from a wifi, and using it. Not new, but made userfriendly.
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
To be fair, most of those people do not actually care. There is a small minority of users who do care, but for some reason continue to use those websites; the rest just want to follow the crowd without stopping to question anything.
Palm trees and 8
What permissions do you need for this? Do you have to be the owner of the network in order to sniff things out in this manner? Or is it possible for me to steal accounts off a public network?
None, no, and most emphatically yes.
You first need to installWinPcap this is the program that does the actual work. You then log on to the wifi, using password if required, and the program starts looking for know cookies. If it finds them it captures the info and gives you a nice userfriendly way of using them.
It can capture the wifi since anyone can capture them if you are within range of the transmissions. You if you are not monitoring when the signals go out you cannot capture them.
And here's the link: https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
> Kudos to FaceBook and most other networks for NOT using encryption for anything but the log in [--DrYak]
> I still have to manually change http to https in the URL every time they decide to sign me off. [--cindyann]
Install the HTTPS-Everywhere FF Plugin. It will SSL-encrypt Facebook and a host of other domains. Only draw-back: Chat doesn't work via SSL atm.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
And while you're at it, also install the BetterPrivacy Add-on:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6623/
which will get rid of the LSO cookie Facebook sets each time you use it. Best used in conjunction with AskforSanitize.
When Google switched Gmail over to HTTPS all the time for everything, they found it accounted for 1% of CPU load:
http://unblog.pidster.com/imperialviolet-overclocking-ssl?c=1
So Facebook probably wouldn't need to do much more than get their software set right.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Facebook does submit your information over HTTPS; they just load the page over HTTP by default. Passive sniffing won't work on it. Here, take a look at the following code from http://www.facebook.com/:
<form method="POST" action="https://login.facebook.com/login.php?login_attempt=1" id="login_form">
The problem with this approach is, while it saves server resources, an attacker could trivially perform a man-in-the-middle attack on an average person connecting to http://www.facebook.com/ rewriting the above code to HTTP or running a squid proxy or something, and they would never notice because their browser says "http" like always.
That said, if you're worried about it you could always install HTTPS Everywhere and it will make Facebook always load using SSL.
Leaving aside md5 cracks (use another algo if you want):
md5 the password with Javascript on the client end before sending it. Then un-md5 it with PHP on the server.
Plenty of security-conscious CMS's have been doing this before Mark Z even thought of an electronic facebook.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
Follow the link you attached. Log into Facebook. Click the Facebook icon on that page to return to your home page, or click on a link to a fan page you have, or click on a link to a friend's page. You just went from SSL to HTTP. They make it hard to STAY on SSL, even if you go through the work of going there manually.
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
What permissions do you need for this? Do you have to be the owner of the network in order to sniff things out in this manner? Or is it possible for me to steal accounts off a public network?
You need to be administrator to place your network card into promiscious mode or rfmon for wireless.
So in a public wifi network you're screwed. In a public ethernet network it depends if it's a switched or hubbed network. But even in a switched network you could be vulnerable to this via ARP poisoning.
The takeaway is what we've known for decades, if you want private communications use encryption.