HSTS Super Cookies
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HSTS Super Cookies
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Re: HSTS Super Cookies
#2https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6797.txt
However, the spec doesn't propose a mitigation for it. I'm afraid many new security policy mechanisms can actually be used to track users or devices this way, because you can experiment to see whether the browser has heard about a particular security policy by observing its behavior when you ask it to violate the policy. If you tell different devices about different policies, their behavior will be different (as if you told different kids who were going to visit a park about different rules for how to behave in the park, and then observed who obeyed and who violated which rules as a way of identifying individual kids).
For example, you can also get tracking out of public key pinning, by selectively pinning certs for some subdomains and not others, and then seeing which subresources are successfully loaded when you present a huge number of pin violations. (I think that's also documented in the HPKP spec.)
Re: HSTS Super Cookies
#3Re: HSTS Super Cookies
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#5Re: HSTS Super Cookies
#6imho it's not reasonable to perform dozens of http requests in order to create a device fingerprint. especially on mobile networks this will require a lot of time until all requests are through.
Re: HSTS Super Cookies
#7This privacy risk is actually documented in the official HSTS specification, section 16.9 of https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6797.txt However, the spec doesn't propose a mitigation for it. I'm afraid many new security policy mechanisms can actually be used to track users or devices this way, because you can experiment to see whether the browser has heard about a particular security policy by observing its behavior…
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-websec-key-pinni...
which also includes another description of this HSTS problem.
Re: HSTS Super Cookies
#8Re: HSTS Super Cookies
#9Re: HSTS Super Cookies
#10I have Chromium set to delete browsing data on close. The HSTS Cookie survives that. Manually deleting browsing data kills it.