Accessing your accounts in public Wi-fi spots such as Airports and hotels has become more riskier with the launch of Firesheep. Before Firesheep, there were many tools such as Aircrack, Wireshark which could sniff information over a network. What Firesheep has done is that it has made it that much more easier for a learner to start sniffing around.
Firesheep works pretty much the same way for wifi networks as other tools such as Aircap and wireshark. It is available as an add on for Firefox. Once installed, the user has to configure the adapter properties and click on start to sniff over the network.
Any unencrypted traffic available over the network such as user names and passwords can be easily captured. Even if the login session is encrypted through https and subsequent sessions are not, it is still possible to capture session information and cookies.
For a typical user using free bandwidth available at public wi-fi spots such as hotels and airports, things apparently could ‘nt get more risky. But then one can argue that people who have been interested in others information already have ways of sniffing around and are probably doing so. Only Firesheep is much easier to use and has much less of a learning curve for a beginner.
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