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NSA uses Google cookies to pinpoint targets for hacking

washingtonpost.com

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Re: NSA uses Google cookies to pinpoint targets for hacking

#31

Post by samstave »

gorhill wrote: post #17
gorhill wrote: post #11

What a coincidence... I was just a few seconds ago, before taking a break to read HackerNews, investigating an issue with a Chromium blocker ( https://github.com/gorhill/httpswitchboard/issues/79# ), and was puzzled finding that the `pref` cookie of `.google.ca` changed every single time the tab of the page lost focus. Even went to Google privacy page to understand what this cookie did, with nothing in their statemen…

That part (value of `S`) changes everytime the tab loses focus: pref=[...]:S=J3ITrb9DNMWLQBzc What kind of "preferences" changes in that way each time the user browse away the page and how does it help "user experience"?

So, are you saying that through this - NSA can see exactly which tab you are viewing at which time?

Re: NSA uses Google cookies to pinpoint targets for hacking

#32

Post by dunham »

quesera wrote: post #24
Smerity wrote: post #7

There are two primary issues here: the prevalence of Google Analytics and the unencrypted nature of the majority of websites. Google Analytics is on a substantial proportion of the Internet. 65% of the top 10k sites, 63.9% of the top 100k, and 50.5% of the top million[1]. My own partial results from a research project I'm doing using Common Crawl estimates approximately 39.7% of the 535 million pages processed so far…

Please do post your research when it's cooked. It sounds like useful stuff. Firefox, ABE, NoScript, Request Policy, Ghostery, HTTPS-everywhere, hygiene. The irony of my militant approach toward privacy is that I probably make myself more interesting to would-be eavesdroppers by my carefulness than I would if they could see it all -- I'm just not that interesting. On the plus side, the LCD of legitimate-threat hostile…

I use Ghostery/Adblock, but I have found that it breaks some web sites (whose javascript expects the tracking code to be loaded).

BTW, if you're using Chrome, you might also want to look into the "Users" section of preferences. You can create multiple user profiles with separate history, cookies, cache, etc. You can have a different user profile per window at the same time. (After you create a second user, there will be an icon in the top right corner of the window to open a window as another user.)

I like to use this to protect against CSRF. (I do financial stuff as another profile and facebook as another profile.) It's also useful for QA if you need to be logged in as multiple people at the same time.

Re: NSA uses Google cookies to pinpoint targets for hacking

#33

Post by rosser »

quesera wrote: post #24
Smerity wrote: post #7

There are two primary issues here: the prevalence of Google Analytics and the unencrypted nature of the majority of websites. Google Analytics is on a substantial proportion of the Internet. 65% of the top 10k sites, 63.9% of the top 100k, and 50.5% of the top million[1]. My own partial results from a research project I'm doing using Common Crawl estimates approximately 39.7% of the 535 million pages processed so far…

Please do post your research when it's cooked. It sounds like useful stuff. Firefox, ABE, NoScript, Request Policy, Ghostery, HTTPS-everywhere, hygiene. The irony of my militant approach toward privacy is that I probably make myself more interesting to would-be eavesdroppers by my carefulness than I would if they could see it all -- I'm just not that interesting. On the plus side, the LCD of legitimate-threat hostile…

My approach is similar to yours. I also take the step of using services I'm persistently logged into in different browsers than the one I do my general browsing in.

I also share your concern that my (lack of a) footprint makes me an outlier, and thus inherently more interesting to an adversary with the power and reach of No Such Agency. There's precisely zero I can do about that, without compromising my local objective of not being followed by every damned website, though, so I just carry on.

Re: NSA uses Google cookies to pinpoint targets for hacking

#34

Post by bigiain »

quesera wrote: post #24
Smerity wrote: post #7

There are two primary issues here: the prevalence of Google Analytics and the unencrypted nature of the majority of websites. Google Analytics is on a substantial proportion of the Internet. 65% of the top 10k sites, 63.9% of the top 100k, and 50.5% of the top million[1]. My own partial results from a research project I'm doing using Common Crawl estimates approximately 39.7% of the 535 million pages processed so far…

Please do post your research when it's cooked. It sounds like useful stuff. Firefox, ABE, NoScript, Request Policy, Ghostery, HTTPS-everywhere, hygiene. The irony of my militant approach toward privacy is that I probably make myself more interesting to would-be eavesdroppers by my carefulness than I would if they could see it all -- I'm just not that interesting. On the plus side, the LCD of legitimate-threat hostile…

Idea: A service to allow people to anonymously "share" Google tracking cookies. Perhaps a local transparent proxy that MITMs all your cleartext Google requests, and re-writes the tracking codes on the fly, submitting the ones you've been given and retrieving other "real" ones from a service (probably a TOR hidden service?)

Re: NSA uses Google cookies to pinpoint targets for hacking

#35

Post by vu3rdd »

Anonymous823 wrote: post #13
bottled_poe wrote: post #10

In my opinion, browsers should block all third party website content by default. Yeah, I know, the interwebs will break if they actually did this. Well perhaps someone should come up with some kind of website quality rating which indicates that a site can be viewed withing worrying about the prying eyes of FaceBook, Google, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.

I made a post the other day, but it got pushed off 'new' in a few seconds. Anyway, I thought someone should setup a simple one or two page site that summarizes the importance of not tracking visitors. Then, it has a few 'this site respects your privacy' images in a variety of sizes that you can copy and paste into your own site, if you agree to respect those rules. It would need to be a recognizable image and symbol.…

I have more or less the same opinions as you. I wrote my browsing setup optimized for privacy here: http://rkrishnan.org/posts/2013-12-01-firefox-privacy.html

Comments and further improvements welcome.

Re: NSA uses Google cookies to pinpoint targets for hacking

#36

Post by [deleted] »

dunham wrote: post #32
quesera wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please do post your research when it's cooked. It sounds like useful stuff. Firefox, ABE, NoScript, Request Policy, Ghostery, HTTPS-everywhere, hygiene. The irony of my militant approach toward privacy is that I probably make myself more interesting to would-be eavesdroppers by my carefulness than I would if they could see it all -- I'm just not that interesting. On the plus side, the LCD of legitimate-threat hostile…

I use Ghostery/Adblock, but I have found that it breaks some web sites (whose javascript expects the tracking code to be loaded). BTW, if you're using Chrome, you might also want to look into the "Users" section of preferences. You can create multiple user profiles with separate history, cookies, cache, etc. You can have a different user profile per window at the same time. (After you create a second user, there will…

[deleted]

Re: NSA uses Google cookies to pinpoint targets for hacking

#37

Post by gorhill »

samstave wrote: post #31
gorhill wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That part (value of `S`) changes everytime the tab loses focus: pref=[...]:S=J3ITrb9DNMWLQBzc What kind of "preferences" changes in that way each time the user browse away the page and how does it help "user experience"?

So, are you saying that through this - NSA can see exactly which tab you are viewing at which time?

No. I prefer the scientific approach. At this point, I just reported what I observed. Maybe somebody will come up with a sensible hypothesis as to why a value changes so often. Google could just come forward and tell us the exact meaning of each field in its cookie. That would be a start.

Re: NSA uses Google cookies to pinpoint targets for hacking

#38

Post by gorhill »

pktgen wrote: post #23
bottled_poe wrote: post #10

In my opinion, browsers should block all third party website content by default. Yeah, I know, the interwebs will break if they actually did this. Well perhaps someone should come up with some kind of website quality rating which indicates that a site can be viewed withing worrying about the prying eyes of FaceBook, Google, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.

Here's my ideal security policy: - Cross-site requests not allowed without whitelisting. This means some setup will be required at first (for example, for separate image domains used by Amazon, Google, Yahoo, etc.), but after a bit it shouldn't be a problem. This also serves as a "better adblock" in some ways, as it blocks ad networks without relying on a database that needs to be updated. - All cookies blocked by de…

Doesn't that fulfill all your points: https://github.com/gorhill/httpswitchboard

Posted on HackerNews two days ago.

Re: NSA uses Google cookies to pinpoint targets for hacking

#39

Post by DannyBee »

Smerity wrote: post #7

There are two primary issues here: the prevalence of Google Analytics and the unencrypted nature of the majority of websites. Google Analytics is on a substantial proportion of the Internet. 65% of the top 10k sites, 63.9% of the top 100k, and 50.5% of the top million[1]. My own partial results from a research project I'm doing using Common Crawl estimates approximately 39.7% of the 535 million pages processed so far…

"My own partial results from a research project I'm doing using Common Crawl estimates approximately 39.7% of the 535 million pages processed so far have GA on them"

This is interesting. I would have actually expected more. The last time I remember someone analyzing this, I believe the result was "" was the most popular tag on the web by far. This was, however, a few years ago.

Re: NSA uses Google cookies to pinpoint targets for hacking

#40

Post by LoganCale »

greenyoda wrote: post #18
pavanred wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox + Third party cookies blocked + Ghostery + NoScript Can be a little inconvenient at times but seems justified now.

If you're using Firefox, you might like a little add-on called "Cookie Monster", which lets you easily control which sites can set cookies (permanently or temporarily) and indicates whether the site you're on has attempted to set them. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookie-monste...

In Chrome, you can use Vanilla. It may not have as many options, but it works fairly well.
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