An In-Depth Look at Public Wifi Insecurity

Recently, I wrote about the vulnerability of public (or "open") Wifi. Now a reporter for CNN has written an article demonstrating how the wifi-eavesdropping tool called Firesheep actually works.

The article is here.

I hate to be the guy who rains on everyones parade (like we need more rain!), but this is (capital I) Important.
If you are in a Starbucks, or some other place with open wifi ("open" means unencrypted), you need to know that there is a risk in going to websites which require a user name and password to get in. Like Facebook, Twitter, your bank, your email, etc.

Gmail is an exception, because you can go to https://www.gmail.com and set up an encrypted session before you put in your user name and password.

If you use the Firefox browser (which you can get here), there is an add-on you can get that will tell you when someone is using Firesheep; it is called Blacksheep, and you can get it here.