11 ms·
I'm sorry, but this is a cop-out. Even five minutes of thought on how you authenticate your users would have shown that it depends on one string being a secret.
by asg 16y ago
I'm sorry, but this is a cop-out. Even five minutes of thought on how you authenticate your users would have shown that it depends on one string being a secret. Most people acknowledge that passwords shouldn't be passed in the clear. So what's the difference between a password and a session cookie in terms of its sensitivity. This is security 101. I think its highly irresponsible, and a disservice to users of all web applications, to suggest that this is new in any sense.
And, in a practical sense, who would you have expected the creators of firesheep to have warned? The top100 sites? the top500? At what point should github have entered the list? Again, this is not a vulnerability in a specific app, its a well known design error.
- pjhyett 16y agoThe vulnerability is wide-spread, but Firesheep was released with handlers written targeting specific sites, including GitHub. So, yes, I would have appreciated a heads up from those guys.
- asg 16y agoOK, I understand why creating specific handlers might warrant a heads up. I suppose I'm unsympathetic since every authenticated web app I've done in the last 10 years has been SSL only. But that was too 'enterprisey' perhaps :). Also I imagine that this is such an obvious thing, it wasn't a case of being unaware of the issue, just taking a conscious risk-reward decision on being SSL-only. Particularly for the really smart developers at github. One could argue that since nothing bad (that we know of) happened before firesheep, it was a valid decision. All in all, I think Firesheep has done a big favour to the web as a whole. PS. this thread has degenerated to using github as an example, I should probably point out that I love and respect github. really.