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Proposed Fingerprinting Technique Works Even When Multiple Web Browsers Are Used

posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday February 15 2017, @02:36AM   Printer-friendly
from the we-know-where-you-browse dept.

takyon writes:

Researchers have proposed a cross-browser fingerprinting technique that uses OS and hardware-level features. The researchers claim to have successfully identified 99.24% of users in their dataset compared to 90.84% for the state of the art of single-browser fingerprinting.

Researchers have recently developed the first reliable technique for websites to track visitors even when they use two or more different browsers. This shatters a key defense against sites that identify visitors based on the digital fingerprint their browsers leave behind.

State-of-the-art fingerprinting techniques are highly effective at identifying users when they use browsers with default or commonly used settings. For instance, the Electronic Frontier Foundation's privacy tool, known as Panopticlick, found that only one in about 77,691 browsers had the same characteristics as the one commonly used by this reporter. Such fingerprints are the result of specific settings and customizations found in a specific browser installation, including the list of plugins, the selected time zone, whether a "do not track" option is turned on, and whether an adblocker is being used.

Until now, however, the tracking has been limited to a single browser. This constraint made it infeasible to tie, say, the fingerprint left behind by a Firefox browser to the fingerprint from a Chrome or Edge installation running on the same machine. The new technique—outlined in a research paper titled (Cross-)Browser Fingerprinting via OS and Hardware Level Features—not only works across multiple browsers. It's also more accurate than previous single-browser fingerprinting.

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 15 2017, @05:14AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 15 2017, @05:14AM (#467238)

    The big vulnerability here is WebGL.
    Who even needs that for anything but games?

    So turn off javascript globally and turn of WebGL.
    That way when you re-enable javascript on specific sites, they still won't have access to WebGL.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 15 2017, @05:45AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 15 2017, @05:45AM (#467244)

    There's also that video chat protocol and geolocation protocol and ...
    We really need to bring control of the browser back to the user, just as free Unix freed us from M$ domination.

    • (Score: 4, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 15 2017, @05:55AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 15 2017, @05:55AM (#467250)

      just as free Unix freed us from M$ domination

      Yep free as in www.apple.com (iOS/BSD) and www.google.com (android/linux). Two companies that almost exclusively use unix/linux/bsd. They are the *very* definition of open right?