Related papers: Who's Tracking Sensitive Domains?
The domain name system (DNS) that maps alphabetic names to numeric Internet Protocol (IP) addresses plays a foundational role for Internet communications. By default, DNS queries and responses are exchanged in unencrypted plaintext, and…
Anecdotal evidence suggests an increasing number of people are turning to VPN services for the properties of privacy, anonymity and free communication over the internet. Despite this, there is little research into what these services are…
Malicious domains are one of the major resources required for adversaries to run attacks over the Internet. Due to the important role of the Domain Name System (DNS), extensive research has been conducted to identify malicious domains based…
Domain names are key assets for organisation. They anchor an organisation's online presence and reputation, and serve as linking pin for web services and, e.g., email. Consequently, a malicious takeover of a domain can lead to significant…
Growth in technology has resulted in the large-scale collection and processing of Personally Identifiable Information by organizations that run digital services such as websites, which led to the emergence of new legislation to regulate PII…
Domain squatting is a common adversarial practice where attackers register domain names that are purposefully similar to popular domains. In this work, we study a specific type of domain squatting called "combosquatting," in which attackers…
Understanding what is normal is a key aspect of protecting a domain. Other domains invest heavily in observational science to develop models of normal behavior to better detect anomalies. Recent advances in high performance graph libraries,…
Domain fronting is a network communication technique that involves leveraging (or abusing) content delivery networks (CDNs) to disguise the final destination of network packets by presenting them as if they were intended for a different…
Commercial companies that collect user data on a large scale have been the main beneficiaries of this trend since the success of deep learning techniques is directly proportional to the amount of data available for training. Massive data…
The Domain Name System (DNS) is involved in practically all web activity, translating easy-to-remember domain names into Internet Protocol (IP) addresses. Due to its central role on the Internet, DNS exposes user web activity in detail. The…
Third-party tracking is common on almost all commercially operated websites. Prior work has studied in detail the extent of third-party tracking on the web, detection of third-party trackers, and defending against third-party tracking.…
Information about millions of people is collected for behavioural targeting, a type of marketing that involves tracking people's online behaviour for targeted advertising. It is hotly debated whether data protection law applies to…
In this paper we present a platform which is usable by novice users without domain knowledge of experts. The platform consisting of an iOS app to monitor network traffic and a website to evaluate the results. Monitoring takes place…
Websites are constantly adapting the methods used, and intensity with which they track online visitors. However, the wide-range enforcement of GDPR since one year ago (May 2018) forced websites serving EU-based online visitors to eliminate…
Privacy is a well-understood concept in the physical world, with us all desiring some escape from the public gaze. However, while individuals might recognise locking doors as protecting privacy, they have difficulty practising equivalent…
The domain name system (DNS) is an important protocol in today's Internet operation, and is the standard naming convention between domain names, names that are easy to read, understand, and remember by humans, to IP address of Internet…
Web services commonly employ Content Distribution Networks (CDNs) for performance and security. As web traffic is becoming 100% HTTPS, more and more websites allow CDNs to terminate their HTTPS connections. This practice may expose a…
Browser fingerprinting is a growing technique for identifying and tracking users online without traditional methods like cookies. This paper gives an overview by examining the various fingerprinting techniques and analyzes the entropy and…
Third party tracking allows companies to identify users and track their behaviour across multiple digital services. This paper presents an empirical study of the prevalence of third-party trackers on 959,000 apps from the US and UK Google…
In addition to visiting high profile sites such as Facebook and Google, web users often visit more modest sites, such as those operated by bloggers, or by local organizations such as schools. Such sites, which we call "Just Plain Sites"…