Fergie's Tech Blog

Black Hat: Web Apps Over Wi-Fi Puts Data at Risk

Jeremy Kirk writes on InfoWorld:

Users who access Google's Gmail or the Facebook social-networking site over Wi-Fi could put their accounts at risk of being hijacked, according to research from Errata Security, a computer security company.

It's not just those sites but any rich Web applications that exchange account information with users, including blogging sites such as Blogspot or even SaaS (software as a service) offerings such as Salesforce.com, that could pose a risk for users, wrote Errata CEO Robert Graham and Chief Technology Officer David Maynor in a paper.

Most Web sites use encryption when passwords are entered, but because of the expense, the rest of the information exchanged between a browser and a Web site is not encrypted, they wrote in a paper presented at the Black Hat 2007 security conference in Las Vegas this week.

Using a packet sniffer, which can pick up data transferred between a wireless router and a computer, it's possible to collect cookie information while a user is accessing one of those sites over Wi-Fi.

posted by Fergie @ 8/01/2007 04:32:00 PM