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Herding Firesheep In NYC — Do Users Care?

Posted by timothy on from the not-so-much dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Following the Firesheep uproar, I spent some time telling people who don't read Slashdot about the vulnerability that open WiFi networks create in what seemed like the most effective way possible: by sidejacking their accounts and sending them messages about how it happened. The results were surprising — would users really rather leave their accounts open to intruders rather than stay off Facebook at Starbucks? The link recounts the experience, and also lists some rough numbers of how many accounts could be compromised at a popular NY Starbucks location."

2 of 200 comments (clear)

  1. They may have been logging in accidentally by jordan314 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I gave Firesheep a try today, and am surprised how many times my own cookies come up inside it without me directly visiting those sites. My google account came up without me browsing at all -- perhaps one of my firefox add-ons was using it, or maybe google latitude on my phone was triggering it? My facebook account came up when browsing other non-facebook sites as well, most likely from facebook connect. The users could have stopped visiting facebook after getting his warning messages and still had their cookies exposed.

  2. The problem is not theirs, they think. by Khenke · · Score: 4, Interesting

    For example I set up my sisters computer with a firewall, anti-virus, anti-malware software and installed FireFox.

    What happened?

    My sister and her husband got sick of the question popping up all the time, "Do you want to allow this program to access the internet?" and instead of reading and the checking the box "Do this always" they found it easier to turn off the firewall and the anti-virus (more stupid questions they didn't bother to read). And to top it up, they thought IE was more familiar and started (against my strong advice) using it again.

    But they didn't have to be the one spending 20h+ trying to rescue what was left after 50+ different virus and adware fighting over the control of the computer.
    It's the same with getting their account hacked, it not their problem (they think), it's mine.

    If people would handle their cars the same way they handle their computer the car industries wouldn't have any problem with sales today...
    And if people handled strangers the same IRL that they handle them on the Internet we would have everyone giving away their keys to their house if a stranger asked for it (of just give it to them without them asking...).

    I will never understand why people feel so safe on Internet.