[peterwwillis]

The information about side channel attacks is really interesting, and useful to defend against real attackers. But there are no coffee shop hackers. Nobody is sitting at Starbucks trying to break into your Facebook account or glean the secrets of the bake sale you're organizing next week.

It would be really nice if reporting news didn't constantly require praying on the unfounded fears people have of things they don't understand.

[chatmasta]

Are you sure about that? Many people log into their bank accounts while online at coffee shops. A passive attacker could tape an old android phone to the bottom of a table, with a custom sniffing program running in the background.

It sounds like a stretch now, but could become a more common threat if some code is released to the script kiddies.

[peterwwillis]

If a hacker wants money they can go online and buy 100 credit cards for less than $10. If they want bank accounts, they can take over someone's sloppily-admined botnet that's already collected thousands of accounts. Even script kiddies know this stuff; those are usually the people who run botnets or make money off spam.

You spend more time trying to pilfer anything useful than would ever be useful. Then there's the whole getting caught bit; most hackers are prison-averse. The only hacking you will see at Starbucks is benign proof-of-concept stuff and research.

[driverdan]

Using an absolute like "there are no coffee shop hackers" isn't accurate. It's probably not common but there are some.

I've thought about why you'd target people in coffee shops / public places. There's a coffee shop in Austin near the capitol that's frequented by politicians and their associates. They often have meetings there or sit and work on their laptops. I think the reasons you'd target them are obvious.

[peterwwillis]

Again, not the right target, and not an efficient attack. If you're targeting specific people, phishing works 200 times better. Politicians generally leave the tech-savvy business to their pages, anyway, and use blackberries for communication. Heck, in DC you can find out more secret intel just riding the subway around certain specific stops and keeping your ears open.