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Noiszy – A Chrome plugin that creates meaningless web tracking data

noiszy.com

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Re: Noiszy – A Chrome plugin that creates meaningless web tracking data

#161
post #157
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It needs to happen in-browser because of the modern prevalence of SSL. I think only Firefox has APIs powerful enough to intercept stuff on this level, and even those APIs are obsolete, so I think it really needs to be integrated straight into a browser fork. Chrome / Firefox WebExtensions have request interception, but I'm not sure it's powerful enough to do this kind of stuff (Also, the mere fact such a scheme would…

The cache/proxy just needs to install its root certificate into your system store and no changes to the browser would be necessary.

It's not sufficient due to certificate pinning, and it also completely short-circuits any browser-based security policies keyed on the certificate or options advertised in the protocol like SPDY. That would be the worst possible outcome, and why any correct solution (i.e doesn't break security or functionality) would be hard to reach

Re: Noiszy – A Chrome plugin that creates meaningless web tracking data

#162
post #161
post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cache/proxy just needs to install its root certificate into your system store and no changes to the browser would be necessary.

It's not sufficient due to certificate pinning, and it also completely short-circuits any browser-based security policies keyed on the certificate or options advertised in the protocol like SPDY. That would be the worst possible outcome, and why any correct solution (i.e doesn't break security or functionality) would be hard to reach

Local root certificates are prioritized by all browsers over certificate pinning, for exactly such intentional MITM.

Re: Noiszy – A Chrome plugin that creates meaningless web tracking data

#164
post #27
post #9

I don't mean to be a curmudgeon, but why put out this kind of privacy-minded plugin for Chrome, one of the browsers I'd probably least trust to respect my privacy?

If you have specific privacy complaints about Chrome, spill it. Content-free finger pointing like this isn't constructive.

Chrome is closed-source, so being specific isn't going to be possible. There are several specific privacy complaints about Chromium, though: https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium/

Re: Noiszy – A Chrome plugin that creates meaningless web tracking data

#165
post #98
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not quite what you're describing, but the venerable Squid cache can do distributed caching. Something, at least, to play with with your nerdy friends.

It needs to happen in-browser because of the modern prevalence of SSL. I think only Firefox has APIs powerful enough to intercept stuff on this level, and even those APIs are obsolete, so I think it really needs to be integrated straight into a browser fork. Chrome / Firefox WebExtensions have request interception, but I'm not sure it's powerful enough to do this kind of stuff (Also, the mere fact such a scheme would…

Or an alternate model / protocol for content retrieval.

Consider that SSL is largely used for connection encryption, though it has the additional side-effect of site authentication.

If you can still validate the site, and rely on a hash of the content to detect changes, then you're starting to get toward a cacheable, secure, autenticated, system.

I need to think more about this.

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