You may think the only people capable of snooping on your Internet activity are government intelligence agents or possibly a talented teenage hacker holed up in his parents’ basement. But some simple software lets just about anyone sitting next to you at your local coffee shop watch you browse the Web and even assume your identity online.
“Like it or not, we are now living in a cyberpunk novel,” said Darren Kitchen, a systems administrator for an aerospace company in Richmond, Calif., and the host of Hak5, a video podcast about computer hacking and security. “When people find out how trivial and easy it is to see and even modify what you do online, they are shocked.”
Until recently, only determined and knowledgeable hackers with fancy tools and lots of time on their hands could spy while you used your laptop or smartphone at Wi-Fi hot spots. But a free program called Firesheep, released in October, has made it simple to see what other users of an unsecured Wi-Fi network are doing and then log on as them at the sites they visited.
Another reason to use firefox.
Try his:
http://www.zscaler.com/blacksheep.html
It’s akin to the hysteria when people realized folks could listen in on their cell phones. As in this instance, people forgot their toys are just fancy two-way radios.
I expect, as usual, that a law will be demanded to solve the problem. Better encryption and using more secure browsers would be a surer thing (as has been the more effective solution for overhearing cell phones), but that seemingly takes more effort than asking for a law.
The only way you can have confidence in being secure when using your laptop on a public network is to set up a virtual private network.
Run an SSH server on your home computer.
Use SSH ( or some commercial product ) to log into your home PC.
Conduct your web activity from there.
That way all of your network activity is encrypted with very strong and private keys.
Better web security and encryption is not something the government desires in the current international security environment.
3, so true. Look at the fit the government had and has over Pretty Good Privacy.