IIRC this was around the time when someone created Firesheep [0] which made it really easy to steal unencrypted session cookies via packet sniffing, which spark

IIRC this was around the time when someone created Firesheep [0] which made it really easy to steal unencrypted session cookies via packet sniffing, which sparked all those articles you are talking about. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firesheep https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firesheep