Publication detail

JShelter: Give Me My Browser Back

POLČÁK, L. SALOŇ, M. MAONE, G. HRANICKÝ, R. MCMAHON, M.

Original Title

JShelter: Give Me My Browser Back

Type

conference paper

Language

English

Original Abstract

The web is used daily by billions. Even so, users are not protected from many threats by default. This paper builds on previous web privacy and security research and introduces JShelter, a webextension that fights to return the browser to users. Moreover, we introduce a library helping with common webextension development tasks and fixing loopholes. JShelter focuses on fingerprinting prevention, limitations of rich web APIs, prevention of attacks connected to timing, and learning information about the device, the browser, the user, and the surrounding physical environment and location. During the research of sensor APIs, we discovered a loophole in the sensor timestamps that lets any page observe the device boot time if sensor APIs are enabled in Chromium-based browsers. JShelter provides a fingerprinting report and other feedback that can be used by future web privacy research. Thousands of users around the world use the webextension every day.

Keywords

Browser Fingerprinting, Web Privacy, Web Security, Webextension APIs, JavaScript.

Authors

POLČÁK, L.; SALOŇ, M.; MAONE, G.; HRANICKÝ, R.; MCMAHON, M.

Released

10. 7. 2023

Publisher

SciTePress - Science and Technology Publications

Location

Řím

ISBN

978-989-758-666-8

Book

Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Security and Cryptography

Pages from

287

Pages to

294

Pages count

8

URL

https://arxiv.org/abs/2204.01392

BibTex

@inproceedings{BUT185115,
  author="Libor {Polčák} and Marek {Saloň} and Giorgio {Maone} and Radek {Hranický} and Michael {McMahon}",
  title="JShelter: Give Me My Browser Back",
  booktitle="Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Security and Cryptography",
  year="2023",
  pages="287--294",
  publisher="SciTePress - Science and Technology Publications",
  address="Řím",
  doi="10.5220/0011965600003555",
  isbn="978-989-758-666-8",
  url="https://arxiv.org/abs/2204.01392"
}

Documents

paper.pdf