Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Just" have a database, and then what? I can set up a database of all UUIDs very easily, but I don't think it's helpful.
Where are you storing them, a black hole?
Fast writes, very slow reads.
LinkedIn checks for 2953 browser extensions
181–190 of 263 posts
Re: LinkedIn checks for 2953 browser extensions
#182Chrome is the new IE6. Google set themselves up to be the next Microsoft and is "ad friendly" in all the creepy ways because that's what Google IS an ad company. All they've contributed to security is diminishing the capability of adblockers and letting malware to do bad things to you as consumers.
I fully agree that Chrome is spyware.
However, they do contribute to security: Chrome was first to implement Site Isolation, sandboxing too. These are essential security features for modern browsers. They are also not doing too bad with patching and security testing.
Re: LinkedIn checks for 2953 browser extensions
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Just" have a database, and then what? I can set up a database of all UUIDs very easily, but I don't think it's helpful.
Where are you storing them, a black hole?
All you need is basic compression, like storing the start and stop points of each block of UUIDs in the database.
Wait, you already linked to everyuuid. Do you think the server it's on uses black hole storage?
Re: LinkedIn checks for 2953 browser extensions
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
3000 extensions is few enough that a small team could download each extension manually over a few months. You don't need to scrape at all.
In the first place, no one said they needed to, only that they probably did. Secondly, it's not "3000 extensions". They didn't somehow magically divine that the 2953 (+/-47) extensions we see here were the ones that they needed to download in order to be able to exploit the content-accessible resources described in their extension manifest. They looked at a much larger set, and it got filtered down to these 2953 that…
Lol no, did you even read the list? You could pay someone to just search "LinkedIn" and "talent" and "recruiting" on the chrome web store and download each extension. It's probably harder to automate this than it is to do it manually. This is something you could develop in an afternoon and pay a small team of people to do for pennies on the dollar. Even ten thousand extensions is nothing. Spread that over years and this is trivial.
Re: LinkedIn checks for 2953 browser extensions
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
The webpage would have to scan the entire UUID space to create this fingerprint, which seems unlikely.
Just have a database of UUIDs. Seems pretty trivial to generate and sort as it's only 16 bytes each.
16 bytes is a lot. 4 bytes are within reach, we can scan all of them quickly, but even 8 bytes are already too much.
Kolmogorov said that computers do not help with naturally hard tasks; they raise a limit compared to what we can fo manually, but above that limit the task stays as hard is it was.
Re: LinkedIn checks for 2953 browser extensions
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
from the code doesn't look like they do anything if they have a match, they just save all the results to a csv for fingerprinting?
"The code" here you're referring to (fetch_extension_names.js[1]) isn't and doesn't claim to be LinkedIn's fingerprinting code. It's a scraper that the researcher behind this repo wrote themselves in order to create the CSV of the data that they're publishing here. LinkedIn's fingerprinting code, as the README explains, is found in fingerprint.js[2], which embeds a big JSON literal with the IDs of the extensions it p…
thanks, my fault for not reading the read me and just doing a quick read of the code.
Re: LinkedIn checks for 2953 browser extensions
#187I started using Chrome at version 2 I think. It still had the 3D logo. It was such a breath of fresh air and the big innovation was running one process per tab. Firefox existed but the entire browser could (and did) hang. And IE was... well, IE. I did have a relatively early beef with Chrome though, whcih was I couldn't completely opt out of Flash. As in, I didn't even want it installed. This turned out to be an issu…
There's a menagerie of de-mozillaed Firefox forks.
My suggestions:
Desktop - Librewolf
Android - Ironfox
Re: LinkedIn checks for 2953 browser extensions
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why frame what you are trying to say like that? Businesses of all sizes deserve the ability to protect their businesses from abuse.
Do they respect my data? Why do they get to track me across sites when I clearly don't want them to but someone can't scrape their data when they don't want them to. Why should big companies get the pass but individuals not? They clearly consider internet traffic fair game and are invasive and abusive about it so it is not only fair to be invasive and abusive back, it is self defense at this point.
You do realize anti-scraping measures are one way of protecting your data too?
Re: LinkedIn checks for 2953 browser extensions
#189Looks like Firefox is immune. This works by looking for web accessible resources that are provided by the extensions. For Chrome, these are are available in a webpage via the URL chrome-extension://[PACKAGE ID]/[PATH] https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/reference/manif... On Firefox, web accessible resources are available at "moz-extension:// /myfile.png" is not your extension's ID. This ID is randomly gener…
Anecdotally, I sometimes notice my computer fan spinning ferociously... it's almost always because I have left a firefox tab with linkedin open somewhere. Are they bit coin mining or are they just incompetent?
Judging from GP's description of how extension IDs work in Firefox, I wouldn't be surprised if LinkedIn were trying to brute-force those UUIDs!
Re: LinkedIn checks for 2953 browser extensions
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just have a database of UUIDs. Seems pretty trivial to generate and sort as it's only 16 bytes each.
That's actually a bright idea! Have you ever thought about applying for VC funds? Once you deliver that, you can also think about a database of natural numbers!
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