Herding Firesheep In NYC — Do Users Care? 200
An anonymous reader writes "Following the Firesheep uproar, I spent some time telling people who don't read Slashdot about the vulnerability that open WiFi networks create in what seemed like the most effective way possible: by sidejacking their accounts and sending them messages about how it happened. The results were surprising — would users really rather leave their accounts open to intruders rather than stay off Facebook at Starbucks? The link recounts the experience, and also lists some rough numbers of how many accounts could be compromised at a popular NY Starbucks location."
From TFA: "my fly had been wide open" (Score:4, Funny)
So that's the reason. None of them noticed his messages because they were too busy staring at his crotch.
Re:They care - they're filing lawsuits (Score:3, Funny)
The Good Old Days (Score:4, Funny)
Back when I was a student in college, we were using DEC VAX/VMS systems to provide service to the campus network.
I loved the help menu. It was VERY useful to do all sorts of things, such as creating your LOGIN.COM file. With the LOGIN.COM file, you could set your command prompt, establish which home directory to use, create macros to start batch jobs...you name it.
Occasionally, we'd come across someone who forgot to log out of their session, and just left ms-kermit running on their terminal.
If it was the first time, we'd telnet into their mail client and send them an email from themselves, warning them to be more careful. If it was the second time, we had a bit more fun.
Such as setting their home directory ATTRIB *.* +H
The best was when we edited their LOGIN.COM file, so that whenever they tried to execute *any* commands, it would send a pmail to the sysadmin saying, "I'm an idiot who left his account open, and I need an adult to fix it for me, please?"
Not surprisingly, the sysadmin WAS amused by this, and had great fun exacerbating the torture. It was a different era, when sysadmins had PhD's and a sense of humor.
Fond memories...
Re:Some people don't care (Score:3, Funny)
You're a nice rural family sitting around the coffee table, and a nice man sticks his head in your door and says "just wanted to let you know, your door is unlocked." Do you expect the folks to get up and run around and lock every door in the house?
Well... since most "rural" families that I know live in Oklahoma and Texas and have shotgun racks on the back of their trucks I expect the conversation to go much differently.
Re:If you did this to me (Score:2, Funny)
I yell "who the fuck hacked my facebook?" and look for the geeky looking dude who looked into his latte.