I recently wanted to install the Firefox Firesheep plug in to mess with on my ASUS 1005ha Netbook. I didn't like that I had to install Firesheep in Windows, as my primary OS is Ubuntu, however, there is no Linux support for Firesheep, so I was stuck with Winblows.
I downloaded the Firesheep plugin from http://codebutler.github.com/firesheep/ and tried to install it (by simply opening it up in Firefox). It wouldn't install because it said my version of firefox wasn't up to date. So, I updated my Firefox and tried again. It then installed fine, but when I went to run it, Firesheep said that it couldn't put my NIC into promiscuous mode. I already had WinPcap installed, but thought I might have to update it. I updated my WinPcap, and that didn't help. So, I thought that my Wireless driver (Atheros AR9285) may need to be updated. I updated my driver, and still it wouldn't put my card in promiscuous mode. On the side chance that it wasn't a Firesheep problem, I downloaded Wireshark to see if IT would be able to put my card in Promiscuous mode. I got the same error with Wireshark.
So my conclusion was that my card won't support promiscuous mode in Windows. If only Firesheep would work with Ubuntu... I also then wouldn't have to worry about the AntiVirus lighting up on Firesheep, like it does in Windows.
I then moved on to my Dell 700m, to try with that IPW2200 card... same result... no joy
I then tried my Linksys WUSB600N USB wireless ... same result... no joy
Luckily, I had a Netgear WG111 Wireless Thumb Drive (B-only). This worked with Firesheep, but is 802.11b only. Still, I thought I'd try it out. A buddy and I went to a Panera to try it out, and even though I had a laptop, he had a laptop, and there were several folks around on laptops, I got no traffic at all in Firesheep. It seems that everyone is on G these days! After about a half an hour, we called it quits. I guess you just can't hack with B anymore.
I tried Firesheep with a Linksys WUSB54GSC V 2. G thumb drive. This worked! So I tried it out at Panera again. This time, there was only me on the network, so I only captured my own traffic. But Firesheep seemed to work very well (except it wouldn't capture any of my iPhone traffic).
Below is a screenshot of Firesheep logging into several accounts it sniffed. The strange thing was that with Twitter, Flickr, and Amazon, even after logging out both on the real browser, and the one running Firesheep, I was still able to just click the account and log right back in. That is crazy. Check out the below:
I've smugged the account names for security reasons, but the screenshot still gives a great feeling for how Firesheep works. And to recap the scariness, not only would Firesheep capture cookies and log into my accounts as if it had properly authenticated, even after I logged out of Amazon, Flickr, and Twitter, both on the browser running Firesheep and the original browser, when I clicked on the account in the left pane of Firesheep, I could log right back in! That means that those services don't kill your session cookie when you log out! Crazy!
So I'm either going to not use any hotspots, or if I HAVE to, I'll use a VPN whenever I'm using any of my accounts. Having an outsider being able to log into my accounts as me this easily is just ridiculous!
I tried Firesheep with a Linksys WUSB54GSC V 2. G thumb drive. This worked! So I tried it out at Panera again. This time, there was only me on the network, so I only captured my own traffic. But Firesheep seemed to work very well (except it wouldn't capture any of my iPhone traffic).
Below is a screenshot of Firesheep logging into several accounts it sniffed. The strange thing was that with Twitter, Flickr, and Amazon, even after logging out both on the real browser, and the one running Firesheep, I was still able to just click the account and log right back in. That is crazy. Check out the below:
I've smugged the account names for security reasons, but the screenshot still gives a great feeling for how Firesheep works. And to recap the scariness, not only would Firesheep capture cookies and log into my accounts as if it had properly authenticated, even after I logged out of Amazon, Flickr, and Twitter, both on the browser running Firesheep and the original browser, when I clicked on the account in the left pane of Firesheep, I could log right back in! That means that those services don't kill your session cookie when you log out! Crazy!
So I'm either going to not use any hotspots, or if I HAVE to, I'll use a VPN whenever I'm using any of my accounts. Having an outsider being able to log into my accounts as me this easily is just ridiculous!
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