The Boxee platform had so much promise. Since releasing the Boxee Box in November…
Experimenting with Pascal on Ubuntu
I’ve been busy lately on a number of projects, one of which…
Twitter Blocked in Egypt: A View From Inside Their Network
I keep various VPSes across the globe for research purposes. One of…
My Thoughts on the iPhone 4 on Verizon
The Verizon iPhone is a win for consumers all around. The competition…
Adding Random Quotes to the Bash Login Screen
According to “official” system administrator rules and guidelines you shouldn’t be adding…
Find Out If A Twitter Username Exists Using PHP/JSON
I’ve been trying to grab a Twitter screenname that people continually register…
Firesheep Should Be A Call To Arms For System, Network & Web Admins
Firesheep by Eric Butler has just been released to the world. This Firefox plugin does a few things that have already been fairly easy to do for a while, but rolled up in one easy to use package:
Sniffs data on unencrypted Wireless Networks
Looks for unencrypted login cookies sent to known popular insecure sites
Allows you to login to that account with ‘One Click’
So what sites are impacted by default? Amazon.com, Basecamp, bit.ly, Cisco, CNET, Dropbox, Enom, Evernote, Facebook, Flickr, Github, Google, HackerNews, Harvest, Windows Live, NY Times, Pivotal Tracker, Slicehost, tumblr, Twitter, WordPress, Yahoo, and Yelp are among the few. A plugin system allows anyone to add their own sites (and cookie styles) to the plugin.
Yikes! It goes without saying that this is a major security problem for anyone who uses unencrypted wireless networks. Includes on this list are many universities and companies such as Starbucks.