Related papers: A Study of Third-party Resources Loading on Web
Despite the tremendous success of BitTorrent, its swarming system suffers from a fundamental limitation: lower or no availability of unpopular contents. Recently, Menasche et al. has shown that bundling is a promising solution to mitigate…
Under increasing scrutiny, many web companies now offer bespoke mechanisms allowing any third party to file complaints (e.g., requesting the de-listing of a URL from a search engine). While this self-regulation might be a valuable web…
The increasing adoption of econometric and machine-learning approaches by empirical researchers has led to a widespread use of one data collection method: web scraping. Web scraping refers to the use of automated computer programs to access…
Malicious URL, a.k.a. malicious website, is a common and serious threat to cybersecurity. Malicious URLs host unsolicited content (spam, phishing, drive-by exploits, etc.) and lure unsuspecting users to become victims of scams (monetary…
Website accessibility is essential for inclusiveness and regulatory compliance. Although third-party advertisements (ads) are a vital revenue source for free web services, they introduce significant accessibility challenges. Leasing a…
The internet can be broadly divided into three parts: surface, deep and dark. The dark web has become notorious in the media for being a hidden part of the web where all manner of illegal activities take place. This review investigates how…
Browser extensions are additional tools developed by third parties that integrate with web browsers to extend their functionality beyond standard capabilities. However, the browser extension platform is increasingly being exploited by…
Recent works showed that websites can detect browser extensions that users install and websites they are logged into. This poses significant privacy risks, since extensions and Web logins that reflect user's behavior, can be used to…
The management of third-party package dependencies is crucial to most technology stacks, with package managers acting as brokers to ensure that a verified package is correctly installed, configured, or removed from an application. Diversity…
Third-party web cookies are often used for privacy-invasive behavior tracking. Partly due to privacy concerns, browser vendors have started to block all third-party cookies in recent years. To understand the effects of such third-party…
Malicious websites are responsible for a majority of the cyber-attacks and scams today. Malicious URLs are delivered to unsuspecting users via email, text messages, pop-ups or advertisements. Clicking on or crawling such URLs can result in…
HSTS (HTTP Strict Transport Security) serves to protect websites from certain attacks by allowing web servers to inform browsers that only secure HTTPS connections should be used. However, this still leaves the initial connection unsecured…
On-line social networks are complex ensembles of inter-linked communities that interact on different topics. Some communities are characterized by what are usually referred to as deviant behaviors, conducts that are commonly considered…
HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 avoid concurrent connections but instead multiplex requests over a single connection. Besides enabling new features, this reduces overhead and enables fair bandwidth sharing. Redundant connections should hence be a story…
Third-party libraries are a central building block to develop software systems. However, outdated third-party libraries are commonly used, and developers are usually less aware of the potential risks. Therefore, a quantitative and holistic…
Phishing attacks are an increasingly potent web-based threat, with nearly 1.5 million websites created on a monthly basis. In this work, we present the first study towards identifying such attacks through phishing reports shared by users on…
Understanding how people interact with the web is key for a variety of applications, e.g., from the design of effective web pages to the definition of successful online marketing campaigns. Browsing behavior has been traditionally…
Third-party security apps are an integral part of the Android app ecosystem. Many users install them as an extra layer of protection for their devices. There are hundreds of such security apps, both free and paid in Google Play Store and…
Assessing cognitive load on web search is useful for characterizing search system features and search tasks with respect to their demands on the searcher's mental effort. It is also helpful for examining how individual differences among…
Software Vulnerability (SV) severity assessment is a vital task for informing SV remediation and triage. Ranking of SV severity scores is often used to advise prioritization of patching efforts. However, severity assessment is a difficult…