
- #HTTP SNIFFER FIREFOX MAC OS X#
- #HTTP SNIFFER FIREFOX INSTALL#
- #HTTP SNIFFER FIREFOX PASSWORD#
- #HTTP SNIFFER FIREFOX WINDOWS 7#
Next: Butler Says Social Networking Sites Prime Example This leaves the cookie (and the user) vulnerable."
#HTTP SNIFFER FIREFOX PASSWORD#
"It's extremely common for Web sites to protect your password by encrypting the initial login, but surprisingly uncommon for websites to encrypt everything else. "This is a widely known problem that has been talked about to death, yet very popular Web sites continue to fail at protecting their users," Butler said in his blog. Butler, who demonstrated the extension on his blog post, says he hopes to raise awareness about the need for Websites to use end-to-end encryption, known as HTTPS or SSL, to secure the entirety of a user's Web session.
#HTTP SNIFFER FIREFOX MAC OS X#
The Firefox extension was released on both Mac OS X and Windows platforms to bolster a talk presented by Butler at the Toorcon 12 security conference. The extension then enables hackers to capture the authentication cookies from these Web sites sent over an unsecure network, allowing miscreants to log on to one of the 26 applications as the original user.įor example, a hacker who hijacks a Facebook session could access a user's Facebook profile picture and then infiltrate the account, even without a password. However, if users log onto one of the 26 sites, the Firesheep extension can sniff out the cookie associated with the visited site. Once users log onto a Web site, the site-specific cookie in the browser will then communicate with the site, providing the identity of the user with information such as username and session ID. Butler presented his findings at the Toorcon 12 security conference in San Diego.Īltogether, Firesheep targets 26 of the most widely used, and highest trafficked applications on the Internet, including Amazon, Facebook, Foursquare, Google, Twitter, Wordpress, Twitter, The New York Times and Yahoo.Įssentially, Firesheep is a packet sniffer designed to detect cookies and analyze unencrypted Web traffic on an open Wi-Fi connection between a router and personal computers. "On an open wireless network, cookies are basically shouted through the air, making these attacks extremely easy," Butler said in a blog post. Also known as "sidejacking," HTTP session hijacking occurs when an attacker gets a hold of a user's cookie, which allows them to impersonate and have the same online privileges as the user on any given Website. In particular, Butler pointed to the fact that insecure applications can open the door for HTTP session hijacking attacks. The extension, known as Firesheep, was developed by freelance Seattle-based developer Eric Butler, who said he created the program to illustrate the vulnerability and security risks of high-profile Web applications, especially when run over unsecured Wi-Fi networks. autogen.A Firefox extension boasts that users can hack into someone else's Facebook, Twitter, or Windows Live account by easily hijacking their session over a Wi-Fi network. Choose Visual C++ 8.0 and Multithreaded debug, static runtime.
#HTTP SNIFFER FIREFOX INSTALL#

Newer versions of Visual Studio should also work, but the Makefiles might need a bit of tweaking. The express edition should work too, but this hasn't been tested.

#HTTP SNIFFER FIREFOX WINDOWS 7#
This has so far only been tested on Windows XP (32-bit), however the binaries work fine on Windows 7 too. Install build dependencies ( sudo apt-get install autoconf libtool libpcap-dev libboost-all-dev libudev-dev).Install build dependencies using Homebrew ( brew install autoconf automake libtool boost).Load the extension into Firefox by dragging it into the Addons page. When done, an xpi will be created inside the build directory. See instructions for your platform below.
