via: WTOP
WASHINGTON — It is not as easy to prevent those with ill intent from accessing personal information in social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Flickr than those sites would have users believe, according to a new online study.
Following the recent creation of easily-accessible social network hacking tool “Firesheep,” Digital Society, a “digital think tank,” released a report card Thursday, giving scores to these sites among others.
Google got a “C,” Yahoo and Amazon got a “C minus,” Hotmail and Flickr both got a “D minus” and Facebook and Twitter received an “F.”
“Even though the vulnerability and easy exploitation online services have been well known since 2007, the lack of mainstream tech media coverage has allowed the online industry to sweep the problem under the rug for the past 3 years,” wrote George Ou, policy director at Digital Society and the author of the study.
WTOP reported Thursday that sites that implementing secure, “HTTPS” browsing can offer significantly more online protection.
With this browsing in place, Digital Society awarded WordPress an “A.” But when accessing the site without that measure, using only “HTTP” browsing, the site received an “F.”
Seattle-based programmer David Butler, the author of Firesheep, claims he developed the program to encourage discussion of the overlooked flaw in these sites, hoping they will upgrade their security measures.
“The problem can no longer be ignored because anyone can use the attack to steal other people’s account,” Ou wrote.
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WTOP’s Darci Marchese and Paul D. Shinkman contributed to this report.
