Firesheep Shows the Ease of Internet Snooping

Firesheep, is a Filrefox add-on developed by Eric Butler, for the purpose of demonstrating the vulnerability of information that routinely appears on some popular websites, such as, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and Yelp.

The hacking tool, which is reported to have been downloaded over 100,000 times in 24 hours, works by letting people see the information traded on public networks through cookies.

This means a person’s session ID and user name can be picked up on an open or public Wi-Fi network;the hacker can, also, take over a live session.

The tool will not access information that is password protected, and it can’t be used to reveal the password itself.

The intention, according to Butler,is to demonstrate security problems to both website users and administrators in regular, unsecured, HTTP sessions.