Session hijacking – DECISION STATS

Cookie theft by sniffing on the network — Image via Wikipedia

You must have heard about Firesheep-

it is a simple utility that adds on your Firefox browser– and simply traps all cookies floating around on public wi-fis like airports, university campuses, caltrain and soon san fransisco

Basically White Hat Hacking made easy so you can pose as anyone else on Facebook– if they are logged in nearby

When logging into a website you usually start by submitting your username and password. The server then checks to see if an account matching this information exists and if so, replies back to you with a “cookie” which is used by your browser for all subsequent requests.

It’s extremely common for websites to protect your password by encrypting the initial login, but surprisingly uncommon for websites to encrypt everything else. This leaves the cookie (and the user) vulnerable. HTTP session hijacking (sometimes called “sidejacking“) is when an attacker gets a hold of a user’s cookie, allowing them to do anything the user can do on a particular website. On an open wireless network, cookies are basically shouted through the air, making these attacks extremely easy.

Read the rest at

http://codebutler.com/firesheep

It would be interesting to see if Firesheep goes viral (or social)