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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..
Ha ha, anon is pwned :D
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.
the fact that it's unencrypted is facebooks fault, it's not hard to push everything through HTTPS, there's no excuse these days
someone in the same network sniffing your unencrypted traffic is facebooks fault ?
or the fact that someone made a UI to do it for dummies ?
The fact that it is unencrypted is, yes.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
Another point does not "miss the point".
Transport security != corporate marketing of private data
"You have liberated me from thought."
I used to do sniffing and stuff like this a couple years ago and the biggest hurdle was finding a wireless adapter which would allow promiscuous mode. aircrack sells one that comes with 1st party drivers to allow sniffing. I used a linksys usb adapter since there were 3rd party drivers that allowed it.
unless something has changed I thought most wireless driver didn't support promiscuous mode for sniffing.
Facebook's servers are too busy violating your privacy to handle the extra load of encryption ;)
Palm trees and 8
Kudos to FaceBook and most other networks for NOT using encryption for anything but the log in, making such hacks possible !
I know that HTTPS would put some stress on the servers, specially with something as big as Facebook.
But, come-on. Social networks have become so important for some people, that the risks of vandalism/identiy spoof/deffamation, etc. are significant and would benefit from some more protection.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
It's "just" WiFi cookie theft. You can do that easily with wireshark and copy/paste, this just makes it a bit faster. The problem lies in session cookies, and this is a problem known for what, almost a decade now?
Emotions! In your brain!
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.
Good point.
I'm surprised so many people are upset about people stealing their private information, but have no problem with someone buying and selling their private information.
You are welcome on my lawn.
furthermore the entire usefulness of md5 is that you can't un-md5 it ;-)
https everywhere is indeed a great extension, and everybody should be using it.
But some of the services that Firesheep target don't offer an https option *at all*. This is no rebuttal, it only proves Firesheep developer's point : these services have an unappropriate level of security.
The worst offender is probably Yahoo! Mail. They don't even offer https to their paying customers! For one of the leading webmail service this is utterly unacceptable. https for login is a fig leaf, the only thing this does is give users a false sense of security.
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.
md5 is a hash algorithm. How would that help? If someone can snoop your md5 hash they can replay it to gain access to the server, and then change your password (provided the server doesn't provide a challenge to perform this action). All md5 does is protect your actual password, which is small protection if your account can be illicitly accessed anyway. None of these services send a password in plaintext (hopefully). That isn't the issue. The issue is that they use replayable tokens and don't use encryption to send them on the wire.
Well, then md5 the hash. It's just like using triple-DES or double rot-13 (one of the two, or maybe a happy middle-ground). ;)
Hash = 1-way crypto
The only way to "un-md5" anything is to crack it. Also, I'm not sure you actually put any real thought into this.
Since it's best practice to store only password hashes (and not the passwords themselves) in your database (or whatever), your process is apparently:
Facebook's servers are too busy violating your privacy to handle the extra load of encryption ;)
Facebooks servers were hanging around in a dark alley one faithful night. My privacy just happened to think that particular night, let's take the shorter route home. It's as if Facebooks servers sniffed she was coming, despite her high privacy settings. They libpcaptured her, then stripped all of her headers and checksums, right to her to the bare profile while taunting her loudly. Some traffic just passed by without doing anything. My privacy was violated again, and again and Facebooks servers just kept going and going. Then they left my privacy "face"-down in a shallow ditch, some shreds of unique ROWIDs covering her bloodsoaked profile.
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