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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…
Tracking pixels are used to optimize online ad campaigns through personalization, re-targeting, and conversion tracking. Past research has primarily focused on detecting the prevalence of tracking pixels on the web, with limited attention…
We explore a new type of malicious script attacks: the persistent parasite attack. Persistent parasites are stealthy scripts, which persist for a long time in the browser's cache. We show to infect the caches of victims with parasite…
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 --…
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…
Securing the communication between a web server and a browser is a fundamental task of securing the World Wide Web. Websites today rely heavily on HTTPS to set up secure connections. In recent years, several incidents undermined this trust…
Web applications are becoming truly pervasive in all kinds of business models and organizations. Today, most critical systems such as those related to health care, banking, or even emergency response, are relying on these applications. They…
Recent developments in online tracking make it harder for individuals to detect and block trackers. Some sites have deployed indirect tracking methods, which attempt to uniquely identify a device by asking the browser to perform a…
We present new analytic techniques for inferring HTTP semantics from passive observations of HTTPS that can infer the value of important fields including the status-code, Content-Type, and Server, and the presence or absence of several…
This paper performs a large-scale study of dependency chains in the web, to find that around 50% of first-party websites render content that they did not directly load. Although the majority (84.91%) of websites have short dependency chains…
Online user privacy and tracking have been extensively studied in recent years, especially due to privacy and personal data-related legislations in the EU and the USA, such as the General Data Protection Regulation, ePrivacy Regulation, and…
Today, many web advertising data flows involve passive cross-site tracking of users. Enabling such a mechanism through the usage of third party tracking cookies (3PC) exposes sensitive user data to a large number of parties, with little…
Free content and services on the Web are often supported by ads. However, with the proliferation of intrusive and privacy-invasive ads, a significant proportion of users have started to use ad blockers. As existing ad blockers are radical…
As a result of the GDPR and the ePrivacy Directive, European users encounter cookie banners on almost every website. Many of such banners are implemented by Consent Management Providers (CMPs), who respect the IAB Europe's Transparency and…
Many websites import large JavaScript (JS) libraries to customize and enhance user experiences. Our data shows that many JS libraries are only partially utilized during a page load, and therefore, contain superfluous code that is never…
Website fingerprinting attacks enable an adversary to infer which website a victim is visiting, even if the victim uses an encrypting proxy, such as Tor. Previous work has shown that all proposed defenses against website fingerprinting…
Third party advertising and tracking (A&T) are pervasive across the web, yet user exposure varies significantly with browser choice, browsing location, and hosting jurisdiction. We systematically study how these three factors shape tracking…
The paper analyses current versions of top three used Internet browsers and compare their security levels to a research done in 2006. The security is measured by analyzing how user data is stored. Data recorded during different browsing…
As e-commerce continues to expand, the urgency for stronger privacy and security measures becomes increasingly critical, particularly on platforms frequented by younger users who are often less aware of potential risks. In our analysis of…
Broken access control is one of the most common security vulnerabilities in web applications. These vulnerabilities are the major cause of many data breach incidents, which result in privacy concern and revenue loss. However, preventing and…