Another Reason To Reconsider That Grande Latte: Firesheep

From Kelly Jackson Higgins, at Darkreading

Average Joes Now Can Be Hackers, Too

The dangers of unprotected WiFi have been well-documented, but that hasn't stopped most customers at Panera and Starbucks from using these connections while they sip their lattes. It used to be that it would take a relatively seasoned hacker across the caf? or in the parking lot to pull off a so-called sidejacking attack against a WiFi user.

But a new tool unleashed in October by Eric Butler, a Seattle-based Web application software developer and researcher, made has now made it possible for the average Joe to hijack a WiFi user's Facebook, Twitter, or other unsecured account session while drinking a cup of Joe.

The controversial Firesheep tool is a Firefox plug-in that lets anyone hijack a WiFi users' cookies by merely pointing and clicking on a nearby WiFi user's Facebook or other account that automatically pops up on the attacker's screen.

Sidejacking attacks are nothing new-- most websites aren't SSL-encrypted today, leaving users open to having their sessions sniffed and hijacked when they log onto sites such as Facebook from the WiFi at Starbucks. Firesheep basically makes this type of attack easy enough for any nontechnical person to do: The tool pops up a window, you click the "Start Capturing" button, and it finds and displays user accounts currently on insecure websites via the WiFi network. "Their name and photo will be displayed: Double-click on someone, and you're instantly logged in as them," Butler explained in his blog post about Firesheep.

Robert Graham, CEO at Errata Security, who developed and released his Hamster sidejacking tool three years ago, says although sidejacking has been a well-known threat for ten years, Firesheep makes the attack more visual and easy to execute. "The way I did it with [my tool], I had to guess where the cookies were going," Graham says, adding that Firesheep grabs that information via the browser and more quickly. "[Butler's] tool works in cases where mine doesn't. It's a better solution."

Firesheep takes advantage of websites that don't SSL-encrypt logins, so when a user visits Facebook, Twitter, Hotmail, or YahooMail, his cookies can be automatically lifted and used by an attacker on the WiFi network to take over his account.

Butler says he hopes Firesheep will force websites to go SSL. "Websites have a responsibility to protect the people who depend on their services. They've been ignoring this responsibility for too long, and it's time for everyone to demand a more secure Web. My hope is that Firesheep will help the users win," he said in his blog post.

Errata's Graham says he'd like to be able to say that sidejacking is old news. "I should be able to say that," he says. "But I can't because I can take this down to Starbucks and hack people, and get to their email and their bank account. That should not work."