Here’s a guide on compiling Firesheep for both Firefox 3.6.x. I will hopefully be posting a usage guide shortly. There is a way to build it for Firefox 4, but as of yet it is not functioning.

1. Clone the git repository containing the firesheep plugin: git clone https://github.com/codebutler/firesheep.git
2. Install the following packages needed to build firesheep: autoconf libtool libpcap-dev libboost-all-dev libhal-dev xulrunner-1.9.2-dev
3. Change to the firesheep directory
4. Run git submodule update --init

If you want to build a firefox 4 version under Backtrack 5, you will have to build xulrunner from source. I will not cover this, as it is fairly simple, but compiling takes forever! Better to build it under a recent version of kubuntu 🙂

5. To attempt to build the Firefox 4 port, run the following commands. You can skip these if you plan on using firefox 3.6.

   git fetch origin firefox4
   git checkout firefox4
   git checkout master
   git merge firefox4

6. ./autogen.sh
7. make
8. The firesheep.xpi you just built will located in the build/ directory.
9. Install in firefox

A blog post, a Backtrack 5 review . . . Awesomeness. BT5 was released via torrent only on the 10th, and I managed to download it earlier this week. I was finally able to install it last night. Here are my thoughts and notes I made while using BT5 for the very brief bit of time that I have had.

Incidental thoughts

This are small things I found while installingusing Backtrack 5 and ways that I think it can be improved. These are just incidental things that could be fixed, but don’t have to be.

• The taskbar does not show a battery monitor by default. It would be nice, although you can easily enable it by changing a setting in the system tray preferences.
• Taskbar is like 60% the width of the screen and slid to the left. I’m not sure what the reason for this is, it would be nice for it to be centered, or full screen width.
• Backtrack 5 uses GRUB2, but does not have a decent theme. It might be nice for the creators to BURG instead.
• It would be nice to have an option in the installer to adjust mobo time in the installer. Backtrack 5 is using my motherboard time, which is set to actual time instead of GMT. There is probably something I need to change but I haven’t taken the time to find it yet.

Larger complaints

These are items that I would consider bugs.

• I really wish the developers would have used a newer version of ubuntu. I know that 10.04 is in long term support, but I still have a few qualms.
• They really need to include some shutdown options.
• When the installer was finished, it said that “Ubuntu” had finished installing.
• When booting, it shows “Ubuntu 10.04” briefly.
• After starting KDE, KDE mentions something about an ensoniq audio device not being found.

Happiness

• Backtrack 5 properly detects and uses the display driver for my netbook, something BT4 R2 did not do. Awesomeness
• I saw that some updates had already been released for Backtrack 5. I know that the point of switching to an Ubuntu base with Backtrack was to enable a better update system. I don’t think that it was really used however in Backtrack4 like it should have been. These updates were nice to see and I really really hope the trend continues.
• I’m glad to see that the installer did not mess up my boot MBR like Backtrack 4 R2 did.
• Over all, I also think that Backtrack 5’s partition layout tool is clearer, which is very nice.

I’ll be playing with Backtrack 5 more over the next month and a half. I’ll be discussing what I find on the Techie Trio podcast. By the way, we released a new episode so you really should check it out.

So, I like hacking because I like knowing what makes things tick. Hacking in the traditional sense provides this. And before you say anything, I’m one of the good guys. All I want to do is survey the network and make sure its as secure as I know how to make. Its also an awesome game of cops and robbers. And I love my netbook, partially because of its compact size but largely because it supports linux. Well, most of it. The one bug in this is the broadcom wireless adaptor that came with my netbook. It doesn’t support monitor mode or injection. Which is crucial to showing your neighbor why he should give you $20 to set up WPA2 on his network. So, I had to buy a “replacement”.

What I picked up is this, the Rosewill RNX-EasyN1, mostly because it was a tantalizing $10 shipped on newegg. And now I’m going to review it.

Appearance

I’ll be frank, its kinda of ugly. The thing is pretty chunky, and pretty ugly. The button is for WPS which means the adapter should communicate with the router and set everything up automatically. I’ve never used it.

What Matters, How Does it Work?

Windows

I tested the adapter briefly under Windows 7. It acquired the drivers with no issue, and Inssider was able to use it. Who cares about windows?

Linux!

Fedora

There’s some driver funkyness to be done to get it to work that I haven’t done. (Note, I did actually get this to work. You need the rt3070 drivers and it will mount as ra0). The broadcom adapter does fine so I don’t *need* this to work on fedora. What I wanted this device for was:

Backtrack 4 R2

And the important thing is, it works. For both injection and monitor mode. The adapter mounts as wlan0 and uses the ralink 2870/3070 driver (which is default).

Monitor Mode

Monitor mode was tested with two methods:

1. airmon-ng start wlan0 which reports that there is now a mon0 created.
2. iwconfig wlan0 mode Monitor. Running iwconfig again reports that the device is in monitor mode. It was confirmed by using Kismet and doing a little bit of war sitting.

Injection

Injection was tested with aireplay-ng -9 wlan0. It reports that injection is functioning.

I haven’t successfully cracked WEP yet, but I presume this is because I wasn’t generating any traffic on my network when I was trying to do the WEP crack.

In Closing

The device does what I wanted it for. That’s all I need.