Your Web Surfing History Is Accessible Via Javascript

[ThaiLife]

Your Web Surfing History Is Accessible (Without Your Permission) Via JavaScript

ScienceDaily (Dec. 6, 2010) — The Web surfing history saved in your Web browser can be accessed without your permission. JavaScript code deployed by real websites and online advertising providers use browser vulnerabilities to determine which sites you have and have not visited, according to new research from computer scientists at the University of California, San Diego.

"JavaScript is a great thing, it allows things like Gmail and Google Maps and a whole bunch of Web 2.0 applications; but it also opens up a lot of security vulnerabilities. We want to let the broad public know that history sniffing is possible, it actually happens out there, and that there are a lot of people vulnerable to this attack," said UC San Diego computer science professor Sorin Lerner.

The researchers documented JavaScript code secretly collecting browsing histories of Web users through "history sniffing" and sending that information across the network. While history sniffing and its potential implications for privacy violation have been discussed and demonstrated, the new work provides the first empirical analysis of history sniffing on the real Web.

"Nobody knew if anyone on the Internet was using history sniffing to get at users' private browsing history. What we were able to show is that the answer is yes," said UC San Diego computer science professor Hovav Shacham.

The computer scientists from the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering presented this work in October at the 2010 ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS 2010) in a paper entitled, "An Empirical Study of Privacy-Violating Information Flows in JavaScript Web Applications."

History Sniffing

History sniffing takes place without your knowledge or permission and relies on the fact that browsers display links to sites you've visited differently than ones you haven't: by default, visited links are purple, unvisited links blue. History sniffing JavaScript code running on a Web page checks to see if your browser displays links to specific URLs as blue or purple.

History sniffing can be used by website owners to learn which competitor sites visitors have or have not been to. History sniffing can also be deployed by advertising companies looking to build user profiles, or by online criminals collecting information for future phishing attacks. Learning what banking site you visit, for example, suggests which fake banking page to serve up during a phishing attack aimed at collecting your bank account login information.

"JavaScript is a great thing, it allows things like Gmail and Google Maps and a whole bunch of Web 2.0 applications; but it also opens up a lot of security vulnerabilities. We want to let the broad public know that history sniffing is possible, it actually happens out there, and that there are a lot of people vulnerable to this attack," said UC San Diego computer science professor Sorin Lerner.

The latest versions of Firefox, Chrome, and Safari now block the history sniffing attacks the computer scientists monitored. Internet Explorer, however, does not currently defend against history sniffing. In addition, anyone using anything but the latest versions of the patched browsers is also vulnerable.

Sniffing out History Sniffing

"We built a dynamic data flow engine for JavaScript to track history sniffing in the wild. I don't know of any other practical tool that can be used to do this kind of extensive study," said Dongseok Jang, the UC San Diego computer science Ph.D. student who developed the JavaScript monitoring technology. The researchers plan to broaden their work and study what information is being leaked by applications on social media and other Web 2.0 sites.

The computer scientists looked for history sniffing on the front pages of the top 50,000 websites, according to Alexa global website rankings. They found that 485 of the top 50,000 sites inspect style properties that can be used to infer the browser's history. Out of 485 sites, 63 transferred the browser's history to the network. "We confirmed that 46 of them are actually doing history sniffing, one of these sites being in the Alexa global top 100," the UC San Diego computer scientists write in the CCS 2010 paper.

Table 1 in the paper outlines the websites the computer scientists found that performed history sniffing during the data collection period. In some cases, the websites created their own history sniffing systems. In other cases, advertisements served by outside companies contained JavaScript code performing the history sniffing.

History Sniffing in Perspective

The computer scientists say that history sniffing does not pose as great a risk to your privacy or identity as malicious software programs (malware) that can steal your banking information or your entire Facebook profile. But, according to Shacham, "history sniffing is unusual in effectively allowing any site you visit to learn about your browsing habits on any other site, regardless if the two sites have any business relationship."

To see history sniffing in action, visit: www.whattheinternetknowsaboutyou.com

"I think people who have updated or switched browsers should now worry about things other than history sniffing, like keeping their Flash plug-in up to date so they don't get exploited. But that doesn't mean that the companies that have engaged in history sniffing for the currently 60 percent of the user population that is vulnerable to it should get a free pass," said Shacham.

Tracking History Sniffing

The UC San Diego history-sniffing detection tool analyzes the JavaScript running on the page to identify and tag all instances where the browser history is being checked. The way the system tags each of these potential history tracking events can be compared to the ink or paint packets that banks add to bags of money being stolen.

"As soon as a JavaScript tries to look at the color of a link, we immediately put 'paint' on that. Some sites collected that information but never sent it over the network, so there was all this 'paint' inside the browser. But in other cases, we observed 'paint' being sent over the network, indicating that history sniffing is going on," explained Lerner. The computer scientists only considered it history sniffing when the browser history information was sent over the network to a server.

"We detected when browser history is looked at, collected on the browser and sent on the network from the browser to their servers. What servers then do with that information is speculation," said Lerner.

The "paint" tracking approach to monitoring JavaScript could be useful for more than just history sniffing, Lerner explained. "It could be useful for understanding what information is being leaked by applications on Web 2.0 sites. Many of these apps use a lot of JavaScript."

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Full Article Here.....

To see history sniffing in action, visit here

TL :jap:

[Xircal]

Firefox has a mode called Private Browsing which doesn't record any history. Also, you can configure Firefox to clear the history (if you enable it that way) when you close the browser.

[harrry]

Firefox has a mode called Private Browsing which doesn't record any history. Also, you can configure Firefox to clear the history (if you enable it that way) when you close the browser.

This does not delete that history.

[bangkokcitylimits]

whattheinternetknowsaboutyou.com did not see my history.

My system does not story webhistory (there's really no need to do that) does not allow any cookies from unknown sites and has a protection against LSO's or unremovable 'Super Cookies' (Firefox add-on Better Privacy 1.48.3)

But it's an interesting article yes.

Edited December 11, 2010 by bangkokcitylimits

[george]

I use Mac and it looks like this nasty stuff only affects Windows users.

Did I missed anything?

[siamect]

Even if it is....why should I care?

Do I have something to hide?

If I, being well over 21, decide to take a glance at a porno site...I really don't care who knows about it.

However if I want to I have programs that will clean out my internet history cache, remove all the windows temporary files left by the internet, and clean out all my cookies stored since the last time I used them.

I use those programs usually daily...when I finish my net searching for the day.

But like I said...I don't really care who knows where I've been anyhow.

I've got other things to worry about.

Living in a kindergarten all your life? Never seen a dictatorship flip out ... open your eyes!

[dave111223]

The latest versions of Firefox, Chrome, and Safari now block the history sniffing attacks the computer scientists monitored. Internet Explorer, however, does not currently defend against history sniffing. In addition, anyone using anything but the latest versions of the patched browsers is also vulnerable.

Big surprise.

[joncl]

With Linux and Chrome it says;

This page checks your browser history and determines which Internet websites you've recently visited. The check might take a little while, so feel free to switch to another tab and come back in a minute or two.

100%

Done

Congratulations, we did not find anything in this category in your browser history.

Feel free to try our other browser history tests.

[beerian]

oh for fuc_k sake. This is as simple as detecting :visited on link. In other words the web site has to include explicit urls that they suspect you have visited, the effects are limited to explicit urls and not all browsers are even are even vulnerable - media hype again. so www.walmart.com might capture if www.costco.com has been visited by you by explicitly including a link to costco and detecting if it shows as visited. Thats it! Yeah I agree that it shouldnt be possible to query such selectors, but it aint nowhere near what the media hype it as..

Edited December 11, 2010 by beerian

[bangkokcitylimits]

A researcher from a Dutch university is warning that Facebook's 'Like This' button is watching your every move. Arnold Roosendaal, who is a doctoral candidate at the Tilburg University for Law, Technology and Society, warns that Facebook is tracking and tracing everyone, whether they use the social networking site or not. Roosendaal says that Facebook's tentacles reach way beyond the confines of its own web sites and subscriber base because more and more third party sites are using the 'Like This' button and Facebook Connect

source

[Orion76]

I use Mac and it looks like this nasty stuff only affects Windows users.

Did I missed anything?

I'm using Firefox on a Mac and I'm pretty surprised at how much of my history can be sniffed.

The page lists a total of 64 websites that I have recently visited.