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This JavaScript can snoop on other browser tabs to work out what you're visiting

theregister.co.uk

1–10 of 68 posts

Re: This JavaScript can snoop on other browser tabs to work out what you're visiting

#6
Not sure if I understand this correctly, but the attacker's JS must load the pages in question to see if they are in cache, right?

Wouldn't that put also them in cache, which means that next time this technique is used it will not work? Even more, there is now plausible deniability: "I never saw these pages, I guess some JS must have been snooping around and put them to my cache..."

And the logical workaround is disabling cache, which helps fight against other tracking techniques too.

All in all, this doesn't sound so worrying. Unless I missing something?

Re: This JavaScript can snoop on other browser tabs to work out what you're visiting

#7

This sounds worrying. Shouldn't your browser prevent this from happening?

"we simply do not need high-resolution timers for the attack"

Not sure there's a lot they could do, short of apis that actively tell lies or introduce deliberate random pauses.

Re: This JavaScript can snoop on other browser tabs to work out what you're visiting

#8

""If you want to visit sensitive and non-sensitive websites at the same time, use two different computers," they said." Or just visit them one after the other, one tab at a time right?

Or just disable Javascript.

Re: This JavaScript can snoop on other browser tabs to work out what you're visiting

#10
> The takeaway, they contend, is that anything short of running a single browser tab at any one point in time poses a privacy risk: if you open a second tab, JavaScript in it can snoop on the other tab. Disabling JavaScript completely will kill off the attack, but also kill off a lot of websites, which rely on JS functionality to work.

Firefox Focus [1], my most used browser (single tab only), seems to be safe from this attack.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_Focus

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