Month: August 2009

Using WiFi at the Mall? Beware of the SideJack Attacks

I thought I’d create a separate post for this.  As I mentioned, someone took over my gmail account while I was at SM City Manila.  The hacker erased all of my emails and sent vulgar chat messages to one of my friends. 

I use a Mac, so knew this was not caused by some kind of virus.

I discovered this was a Sidejack attack.  Here’s a helpful video: 

So here a few precautions I’d recommend for using WiFi at public places:

1.  Use a secure page option when checking your mail.  Secure pages begin with https://  (note the “s” at the end of the http).

2.  You can change the settings in your gmail to always use a secure connection.  Just go to your settings and find this:

 
3.  My google page is my homepage, which automatically comes up anytime I open Firefox.  I changed the settings to a secure version of igoogle, and you may want to do the same:
 
4.  Be very careful about using Twitter, FaceBook, forums, and other non-secure websites when using public wifi.  
I’m still going to use wifi at the mall.  If I just stopped using it altogether, the idiot hacker wins. 
Want to warn others?  Just use the “add this” button below to re-post this article to your twitter, facebook, etc.