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Webextensions can improve web browser privacy, security, and user experience. The APIs offered by the browser to webextensions affect possible functionality. Currently, Chrome transitions to a modified set of APIs called Manifest v3. This…
Websites are capable of learning a wide range of information about the platform on which a browser is executing. One major source of such information is the set of standardised Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) provided within the…
Many internet ventures rely on advertising for their revenue. However, users feel discontent by the presence of ads on the websites they visit, as the data-size of ads is often comparable to that of the actual content. This has an impact…
Securing browsers in mobile devices is very challenging, because these browser apps usually provide browsing services to other apps in the same device. A malicious app installed in a device can potentially obtain sensitive information…
Web browsers, particularly Google Chrome and other Chromium-based browsers, have grown in popularity over the past decade, with browser extensions becoming an integral part of their ecosystem. These extensions can customize and enhance the…
Desktop browser extensions have long allowed users to improve their experience online and tackle widespread harms on websites. So far, no equivalent solution exists for mobile apps, despite the fact that individuals now spend significantly…
The "eternal war in cache" has reached browsers, with multiple cache-based side-channel attacks and countermeasures being suggested. A common approach for countermeasures is to disable or restrict JavaScript features deemed essential for…
To protect users' privacy, legislators have regulated the usage of tracking technologies, mandating the acquisition of users' consent before collecting data. Consequently, websites started showing more and more consent management modules --…
We identify class of covert channels in browsers that are not mitigated by current defenses, which we call "pool-party" attacks. Pool-party attacks allow sites to create covert channels by manipulating limited-but-unpartitioned resource…
Google Chrome is the most popular Web browser. Users can customize it with extensions that enhance their browsing experience. The most well-known marketplace of such extensions is the Chrome Web Store (CWS). Developers can upload their…
Modern web browsers have effectively become the new operating system for business applications, yet their security posture is often under-scrutinized. This paper presents a novel, comprehensive Browser Security Posture Analysis…
This article provides a quantitative analysis of privacy-compromising mechanisms on 1 million popular websites. Findings indicate that nearly 9 in 10 websites leak user data to parties of which the user is likely unaware; more than 6 in 10…
In the modern Web, service providers often rely heavily on third parties to run their services. For example, they make use of ad networks to finance their services, externally hosted libraries to develop features quickly, and analytics…
Modern web browsers are incredibly complex, with millions of lines of code and over one thousand JavaScript functions and properties available to website authors. This work investigates how these browser features are used on the modern,…
People are becoming increasingly concerned with their online privacy, especially with how advertising companies track them across websites (a practice called cross-site tracking), as reconstructing a user's browser history can reveal…
With the success of Web applications, most of our data is now stored on various third-party servers where they are processed to deliver personalized services. Naturally we must be authenticated to access this personal information, but the…
Browsers and their users can be tracked even in the absence of a persistent IP address or cookie. Unique and hence identifying pieces of information, making up what is known as a fingerprint, can be collected from browsers by a visited…
Organised crime, as well as individual criminals, is benefiting from the protection of private browsers provide to those who would carry out illegal activity, such as money laundering, drug trafficking, the online exchange of child-abuse…
This paper presents a systematic evaluation of the privacy behaviors and attributes of eight recent, popular browser agents. Browser agents are software that automate Web browsing using large language models and ancillary tooling. However,…
Privacy has been a major concern for everybody over the internet. Governments across the globe have given their views on how the internet space can be managed effectively so that there is some control on the flow of confidential information…