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We found a stable Firefox identifier linking all your private Tor identities

fingerprint.com

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Re: We found a stable Firefox identifier linking all your private Tor identities

#51
post #19
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't use vulnerabilities in our products.

I don't understand what you mean. What separates this from other fingerprinting techniques your company monetizes? No software wants to be fingerprinted. If it did, it would offer an API with a stable identifier. All fingerprinting is exploiting unintended behavior of the target software or hardware.

Iffy vs grossly unethical.

Re: We found a stable Firefox identifier linking all your private Tor identities

#52

I question why websites can even access all this info without asking or notifying the user. Why don't browsers make it like phones where the server (app) has to be granted permission to access stuff?

The most popular browser is made by an ad company. They also provide the majority of funding for their biggest competitor. Why would you expect anything different?

Re: We found a stable Firefox identifier linking all your private Tor identities

#53

Honestly it seems that most of Web Standards are used mostly for fingerprinting - I think a small number of websites uses IndexedDB (who even needs it) for actually storing data rather than fingerprinting. That's why expansion of web standards is wrong. Browser should provide minimal APIs for interacting with device and features like IndexedDB can be implemented as WebAssembly library, leaking no valuable data. For e…

You can use a browser extension like "Local Storage Editor" to see the contents of the Local Storage of a website. So far, I've seen it used for caching long-life images (like on gmail), or used as another way to do logins instead of cookies.

Re: We found a stable Firefox identifier linking all your private Tor identities

#54

I question why websites can even access all this info without asking or notifying the user. Why don't browsers make it like phones where the server (app) has to be granted permission to access stuff?

>Why don't browsers make it like phones where the server (app) has to be granted permission to access stuff?

Like Android phones perhaps? Unfortunate Apple gives very little granular control.

Re: We found a stable Firefox identifier linking all your private Tor identities

#55

I question why websites can even access all this info without asking or notifying the user. Why don't browsers make it like phones where the server (app) has to be granted permission to access stuff?

I mean Google ain't paying for Chromium development just for the fun of it...

Re: We found a stable Firefox identifier linking all your private Tor identities

#56
post #10

From the sounds of this it sounds like it doesn't persist past browser restart? I think that would significantly reduce the usefulness to attackers.

Would it though? I guess state agencies already know all nodes or may know all nodes. When you have a ton of meta-information all cross-linked, they can probably identify people quite accurately; may not even need 100% accuracy at all times and could do with less. I was thinking about that when they used information from any surrounding area or even sniffing through walls (I think? I don't quite recall the article bu…

> I guess state agencies already know all nodes or may know all nodes.

Assume the same.

>The idea is to amass as much information as possible

Reminded, from 2012: https://www.wired.com/2012/03/ff-nsadatacenter/

Re: We found a stable Firefox identifier linking all your private Tor identities

#57
post #4

It seems Qubes OS and Qubes-Whonix are not affected.

In the last ten years has qubes moved on to support more hardware? Every 4 years I would try to use it only to find it didn't support any of my hardware.

Qubes OS hardware support, while still far from perfect, is vastly better than it was ten years ago.

Joanna Rutkowska's understandable preference for older kernels had its advantages, but the current team is much more likely to ship somewhat newer kernels and I've been surprised by what hardware 4.3 has worked well on.

Beyond that, I'm currently running a kernel from late Feb/early Mar (6.19.5).

Driver support can still be an issue, and a Wi-Fi card that doesn't play nice with Linux in general is doing to be no different on Qubes OS.

Re: We found a stable Firefox identifier linking all your private Tor identities

#58

Well that sucks. I guess in the long run we need a new engine and different approach. Someone should call the OpenBSD guys to come up with working ideas here.

Here you go: https://qubes-os.org .

>Why Qubes OS?

>Physical isolation is a given safeguard that the digital world lacks

>In our digital lives, the situation is quite different: All of our activities typically happen on a single device. This causes us to worry about whether it’s safe to click on a link or install an app, since being hacked imperils our entire digital existence.

>Qubes eliminates this concern by allowing us to divide a device into many compartments, much as we divide a physical building into many rooms. …

Sold

https://doc.qubes-os.org/en/latest/introduction/intro.html

Re: We found a stable Firefox identifier linking all your private Tor identities

#59

I question why websites can even access all this info without asking or notifying the user. Why don't browsers make it like phones where the server (app) has to be granted permission to access stuff?

Hah. It's still better than apps.

Apps have access to inconceivable amounts of identifiers and device characteristics, even on the well protected systems without Google Play services.

Re: We found a stable Firefox identifier linking all your private Tor identities

#60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes sense to me, they're likely not trying to actually fingerprint Tor users. Those users will likely ignore ads, have JS disabled, etc. the real audience is people on the web using normal tooling.

Uhh okay, so they do exploit vulnerabilities, they just try to target victims who can be served ads? What a weird distinction.

Painting fingerprinting as vulnerability exploit is your own very biased and very out-of-norm framing.
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