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Hack: Site steals your browsing history based on URL link color

caughtyouwatching.com

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Re: Hack: Site steals your browsing history based on URL link color

#11
Some time ago I wrote this:

http://antirez.com/page/cachetest.html

AFAIK the bug I shown is not currently fixed. The idea is to perform a request for an image in the target site (usually the logo), meter how many milliseconds it takes, if it takes very little (near to zero) you already visited the site. If the latency is instead in the normal range you didn't. See the article for more info.

Re: Hack: Site steals your browsing history based on URL link color

#12
post #10

Yet another reason to use NoScript. ... why would I be down-voted for mentioning a solution which prevents 100% of JavaScript history attacks???

It's not really relevant to anything. I could say it's another reason to go back to using BBS's instead of the WWW, but that's not really a useful observation is it.

I don't think disabling JS by default is equivalent to going back to BBSes. IMO it's how JS and other client-side scripting technologies should have been implemented from the very beginning, on an opt-in basis with the onus on the site developer to convince users that it's worthwhile to enable the feature for their site.

Re: Hack: Site steals your browsing history based on URL link color

#14
post #10

Yet another reason to use NoScript. ... why would I be down-voted for mentioning a solution which prevents 100% of JavaScript history attacks???

It's not really relevant to anything. I could say it's another reason to go back to using BBS's instead of the WWW, but that's not really a useful observation is it.

But that's not what noscript does; it allows you to whitelist known-good scripts, and only run those. So when you go goodsite.com, you can see the cool javascript animations, but when you browse to steals-your-history.com, your history won't be stolen.

Sure, goodsite.com can choose to spy on you... but that is less likely than some other random site being the bad one.

Re: Hack: Site steals your browsing history based on URL link color

#15

Yet another reason to use NoScript. ... why would I be down-voted for mentioning a solution which prevents 100% of JavaScript history attacks???

I use NoScript too, but you can do it in pure CSS and Noscript won't block it: just set a:visited for the link you're interested in to use a certain background image, which will only hit your server if the link is actually visited.

Re: Hack: Site steals your browsing history based on URL link color

#16
post #12
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not really relevant to anything. I could say it's another reason to go back to using BBS's instead of the WWW, but that's not really a useful observation is it.

I don't think disabling JS by default is equivalent to going back to BBSes. IMO it's how JS and other client-side scripting technologies should have been implemented from the very beginning, on an opt-in basis with the onus on the site developer to convince users that it's worthwhile to enable the feature for their site.

That would be a terrible user experience.

At one time browsers didn't display images by default eiter. It was horrible.

Re: Hack: Site steals your browsing history based on URL link color

#18
post #5

This is really old news. Here's an HN link discussing someone's batshit crazy startup idea based on it: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=404564

It's definitely a useful trick for only showing certain content to certain users. For example, I wrote a script so you only show Digg buttons to visitors that have been to digg.com: http://int2e.com/blog/improved-digg-integration-script/

Re: Hack: Site steals your browsing history based on URL link color

#19
post #18
post #5

This is really old news. Here's an HN link discussing someone's batshit crazy startup idea based on it: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=404564

It's definitely a useful trick for only showing certain content to certain users. For example, I wrote a script so you only show Digg buttons to visitors that have been to digg.com: http://int2e.com/blog/improved-digg-integration-script/

You don't even need Javascript.

    ...digg button code...
Now you can use CSS to hide visited links.

    a.digg:visited { display: none; }
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