Google Web History vulnerable to new Firesheep Addon
Two researchers have shown how a modded version of the Firesheep Wi-Fi sniffing tool can be used to access most of a victim's Google Web History, a record of everything an individual has searched for.
The core weakness discovered by the proof-of-concept attack devised by Vincent Toubiana and Vincent Verdot lies with what is called a Session ID (SID) cookie, used to identify a user to each service they access while logged in to one of Google's services.
Fortunately, the latest exploit does not allow attackers to take over Google Accounts, but obviously, it can be used to expose private data. "While the direct access to users' data is subject to a strict security policy, using personalized services (which may leak this same personal information) is not," wrote Vincent Toubiana and Vincent Verdot, the creators of the modded Firesheep.
The core weakness discovered by the proof-of-concept attack devised by Vincent Toubiana and Vincent Verdot lies with what is called a Session ID (SID) cookie, used to identify a user to each service they access while logged in to one of Google's services.
To be sure, the compromised cookies are deployed across more than 20 websites including Google Search, Google Maps, YouTube and Blogger. Every time the user accesses an application, the same SID cookie is sent in the clear, which the Firesheep captures from the data sent to and from a PC connected to a non-encrypted public Wi-Fi hotspot.
We consider the concerns raised by these researchers to be fairly academic in nature and not a significant risk to users. Google Web History and our Web Search suggestion service are served over HTTPS, and we have encrypted the back-end server requests associated with the suggestion service as well. We look forward to providing more support for SSL technologies across our product offerings in the future, including changes that will specifically protect hijacked cookies from being used to access search data.
The researchers said users can protect themselves by logging out of their Google accounts while connecting over networks they don't trust. Another countermeasure is to disable Google's "visited" and "social" search filters.
