Google Web History vulnerable to new Firesheep Addon
Sep 09, 2011
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. To be sure, the compromised cookies are deployed across more than 20 websites inc...