Lets check it out - fire up a webmail client of your choice (you don't even need to have their service). Here's something scary: The difference between your password remaining hidden and becoming clear as day is exactly 4 keystrokes. We call up a URL, pop in our username and password, and hit send - sometimes the username and password are even populated for us, with the password represented by a string of ******* characters. Lets think for a moment about how we log into our e-mail. Well, that's a neat little novelty, but so what? Beyond redirecting traffic for the duration that the page is loaded, this doesn't do much. Looking in the URL bar, you can even see the reference to where we just were - MSN ( figure 3).

Close the element inspector, type in a search phrase, and hit enter - notice where you end up? Right, Google ( figure 2). By double-clicking on the link, I can type in the URL for Google's search page, effectively redirecting the user's search from Bing to Google ( figure 1). In my example below, I've highlighted link for 'Web,' which we can see in the source-code links to Bing's results page. You're presented with code rendered, with the part you highlighted pre-selected. Open up any popular website, highlight a link, and inspect the element.

So, how does this relate to security? Lets take a look at how inspect element works. The feature, called 'Inspect Element,' is available on each of the top three browsers (Shortcuts - Internet Explorer: F12 Chrome: Ctrl+Shift+C Firefox: Ctrl+Shift+I). One feature well-known to developers (and tinkerers alike) is the ability to open a webpage, and live-edit the code.

Private browsing, tabbed browsing, and browser add-ons are commonplace, and the fight for superiority seems to have focused on speed and security. In recent years, browsers have become much more feature rich.

Pop out inspect element chrome