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Brute-forcing a macOS user’s real name from a browser using mDNS

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Re: Brute-forcing a macOS user’s real name from a browser using mDNS

#91
post #85
post #57

On my macOS box, I run Little Snitch, a nice UI that can be set to ask local user for explicit permission before allowing a network request. https://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/index.html I’ve occasionally stumbled on it during remote logins, usually when an SSH session wants to download something new, like NPM requesting NodeJS bits. The text terminal SSH download will block; if I figure out it’s the Little S…

Little Snitch is amazing. Any windows comparable?

I’ve had good luck with Portmaster [0]

- [0] https://safing.io/

Re: Brute-forcing a macOS user’s real name from a browser using mDNS

#92
post #85
post #57

On my macOS box, I run Little Snitch, a nice UI that can be set to ask local user for explicit permission before allowing a network request. https://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/index.html I’ve occasionally stumbled on it during remote logins, usually when an SSH session wants to download something new, like NPM requesting NodeJS bits. The text terminal SSH download will block; if I figure out it’s the Little S…

Little Snitch is amazing. Any windows comparable?

GlassWire is great, https://www.glasswire.com/

Re: Brute-forcing a macOS user’s real name from a browser using mDNS

#93
offtopic, does the browser offer some kind of Network Service Discovery? If so we can establish WebRTC sessions without any signaling servers, like opening two different browsers on different devices in a LAN, they discover each other without any outbounding connections.

Re: Brute-forcing a macOS user’s real name from a browser using mDNS

#94
post #93

offtopic, does the browser offer some kind of Network Service Discovery? If so we can establish WebRTC sessions without any signaling servers, like opening two different browsers on different devices in a LAN, they discover each other without any outbounding connections.

Yes that is (almost) possible!

https://github.com/pion/offline-browser-communication

If the W3C accepted this as a valid use case it could be available quickly.

Re: Brute-forcing a macOS user’s real name from a browser using mDNS

#95
Good thing I always change the name of my devices.

Apple's default naming is a privacy error. One time I was on a first date with someone in law enforcement. Being a woman alone and obviously interested in protecting herself, she'd done a background check on me and had informed several fellow community members of our whereabouts.

I, on the other hand, didn't know her last name. We joked about that. When we got in her car after dinner, the intrigue was up when her dashboard display showed that it auto-paired with her iPhone... which was named with her first and last name. I didn't point this out, and challenged her to figure out how I knew her name by the time the drive was over.

Re: Brute-forcing a macOS user’s real name from a browser using mDNS

#96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd think so, but the way I've set it up Little Snitch throws up a dialog box when a browser makes errant requests but otherwise remains silent. Most recently this caught Firefox trying to force DNS over HTTPS despite me having disabled it when it first became generally available. I suppose leaking DNS requests to Cloudflare isn't the worst thing in the world, but it would circumvent the ad blocking I've set up loc…

Better cloudflare than your ISP that's already explicitly intercepting your dns queries to sell your data/profile.

I trust my ISP a lot more than cloudflare, in part because there's actual competition and I picked one with a strong privacy focus.

Re: Brute-forcing a macOS user’s real name from a browser using mDNS

#97
post #59

The more time passes, the more comfortable I feel about mostly interacting with the internet from a Qubes box, in a disposable Whonix/Tor VM, with Javascript disabled... This is just gross. I mean, not surprising. But appalling in so many ways that it's even possible. If you're not familiar with fingerprint.com, they do "deep user profiling" - think "maintaining a constant user ID across computers, browsers, OSes, et…

Wow it totally recognizes my same device across different VPN IPs. Creepy indeed

Re: Brute-forcing a macOS user’s real name from a browser using mDNS

#98
post #33
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that true? There’s a preflight request that checks with the server as to what’s allowed and then the browser issues the original request if it’s ok, right?

"Simple requests" are not preflighted, such as those that do not set any headers (among other qualifications). https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/CORS#simpl... (Aside, is MDN's href linking broken for everyone or just me?)

Re: your aside, the link works for me. I'm taken directly to the "Simple requests" section.

Re: Brute-forcing a macOS user’s real name from a browser using mDNS

#100
post #85
post #57

On my macOS box, I run Little Snitch, a nice UI that can be set to ask local user for explicit permission before allowing a network request. https://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/index.html I’ve occasionally stumbled on it during remote logins, usually when an SSH session wants to download something new, like NPM requesting NodeJS bits. The text terminal SSH download will block; if I figure out it’s the Little S…

Little Snitch is amazing. Any windows comparable?

I’ve been enjoying Windows Firewall Control from BiniSoft/Malwarebytes. It’s a sort of a (better IMHO) hybrid GUI between Windows built in host firewall, and Little Snitch’s application firewalling.

EDIT: typo

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