Firesheep continues to get huge Buzz around the blog-o-sphere. It has opened up a lot of eyes regarding security and how inherently insecure the Web can be. The truth is, Websites should start to deal with the issues of side-jacking. One of the arguments is that servers might not be able to handle the extra load. Whether that is a valid argument or not is rather debatable. Sites may not have to encrypt every page to give logged in users protection.

When I loaded up Firesheep the first time, I noted that I couldn't sidejack one of my own accounts on either of my wireless networks. Why was that I wondered? What was special about my network that was different than the coffee shop down the street? I have a wireless router kicking around that isn't used for anything - it is in mint condition. Opening it wide I was able to hijack one laptop in the house with another - but after applying WPA password encryption the security hole seemed to have cleared up. At VERY least coffeeshops, libraries, schools, churches, and any other group that might have wireless available to folks should secure it with some level of WPA. This ought to solve the firesheep issue.

But searching around to get more clarity on the issue made it clear to me, that even though firesheep is a nuisance and will make me think twice about using public wifi - there is only one way to do it.

If you really want to secure a Wi-Fi network in 2010 you must use WPA2 with Counter Mode with Cipher Block Chaining Message Authentication Code Protocol (CCMP), aka Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). If you don’t, trust me, if someone really wanted your important information out of your business network they’ve already got it and then they didn’t a baby cracker tool like Firesheep to do it.

quote from ZDNet - Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols

So, don't use unsecured wireless networks. When you are using secured wireless networks, unless they are trusted, don't access any of your sensitive information. Be careful and be safe.

Photo Credit: Anita363 on Flickr
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