Awesome technique to track website browsing even if you use a different browser

ByJay Wennington

It is well known that search services, advertising agencies, website administrators, etc. distinguish Internet users from browser type, screen resolution, plugin name, etc. However, such tracking has been , It was cut off by changing the browser. However, in a new study, tracking was continued even if the browser was changed, and a technique was discovered in which the identification accuracy was very high.

(PDF file) Browser Fingerprinting via OS and Hardware Level Features
http://yinzhicao.org/TrackingFree/crossbrowsertracking_NDSS17.pdf

Websites Can Now Track You Online Across Multiple Web Browsers
http://thehackernews.com/2017/02/cross-browser-tracking.html


It is well known that search services, online mail-order sites, advertising companies, etc. are tracking the behavior of Internet users, and in 2013 Microsoft announced "Google Chrome is making money by monetizing your personal information!It is about the campaign which claims to claim that. For these tracking, you can use the browser's features to identify users "FingerprintHowever, until now, the website side could not continue tracking when the user changed the browser. In other words, it was not recognized as "the same user" between Internet using Firefox and Internet using Google Chrome.

But this time, Yinzhi Cao and Song Li of Lehigh University, and Erik Wijmans of St. Louis Washington University discover new fingerprinting techniques. Using this technique, even if you are using multiple browsers, the user will be identified as "identical".

This technique imposes tasks to use graphics cards, graphic cards, multicore processors, sound cards, installed fonts etc. using code. These features are slightly different for each computer. Because the server side identifies the computer based on the characteristics of the OS and the hardware rather than the browser, even if the browser is changed, the user can be identified.

In the research thesis, as one example, "Imposing 20 WebGL tasks while letting the client computer render the 3D graphics on the browser" is mentioned, but it is currently confirmed that the time zone · It is possible to identify computers by using 36 functions such as the number of CPU cores, GPU, and hash value. In addition, when researchers tried the above method for 1903 users, it seems that 99.2% of the users can be identified.

ByDai KE

Although this technique was discovered purely as part of research, "There is a fear that people can violate user's freedom by displaying customized advertisements using cross browser / tracking." "But in order to break through privacy violations, we need to know our enemies well," Cao said, researching IT-related news sitesArs TechnicaI talked to him.