How safe are you when you are using a public WiFi?

Everyone loves free WiFi. Free Internet while you are having a lunch or a tea time with your friends and families, all you have to do is pick up your phone or laptop, search for wireless network and voila! But what you didn't know was, you are making yourself vulnerable to hackers. 


According to the source, A web app developer recently developed the Firesheep, a Firefox addon that allow even novice user to scan a WiFi network and hack other people's account. Eg. Facebook, Twitter and other accounts. All he had to do was connect to the public WiFi that you're connected to, click a button and the addon will automatically start capturing login data and displaying user details at the side as shown below.

I do not own a Mac, so yeah the picture was from the source. One more thing about Mac OS X, you're not fully invulnerable to this addon. It is capable of doing the same thing to your nice little Apply Mac as well cause just because you think you spend a few hundred more to buy an Apply Mac, you're safe and secure. 


To protect yourself against this attack, the last thing you want to do is connect to a public WiFi connection. What for I buy a smartphone and laptops then? Answer is simple, for me! I'm just joking.


According to a senior security advisor vendor Sophos, is to use a VPN (Virtual Private Network) whenever you are connecting to a public WiFi.  A VPN will encrypt all traffic that goes on when you’re connected, including the sites Firesheep aims at attacking. It’s still not a total solution though, a VPN can only protect information on its server and once the information leaves the VPN, it’ll still be vulnerable, but it will take much more than Firesheep or a novice hacker to steal your data. If you're unsure of how this works, go to Techworld and do some reading. It's quite long. 

Anyone off to get some roasted lamb?

Source : Lowyat.NET