Anti-Fingerprinting Technique : NONYM!ZER /
Amr El-Banna
- 2018
- 59 p. ill. 21 cm.
Supervisor: Nashwa Abd El-Baki
Thesis (M.A.)—Nile University, Egypt, 2018 .
"Includes bibliographical references"
Contents: Abstract.......................................................................................................................XII How Web Tracking has started?.....................................................................................1 Web Tracking Dynamics................................................................................................4 Techniques & Methods:.............................................................................................6 1. TCP/IP stack......................................................................................................7 2. User-Agent........................................................................................................8 3. FlashPlayer........................................................................................................8 4. ServerLight.....................................................................................................10 5. WebGL............................................................................................................10 6. JavaApplet.......................................................................................................11 7. Canvas.............................................................................................................13 8. Fonts................................................................................................................14 9. Cascade Style Sheet - CSS..............................................................................14 10. Social Media Login.......................................................................................15 11. geoLocation API...........................................................................................16 Countermeasures and preventive actions.....................................................................17 1. Less verbosity of User-Agent String and Plugins................................................17 2. Canvas blocker.....................................................................................................17 3. Flash Blocker.......................................................................................................17 4. Applications in the middle...................................................................................17 5. Social Media Protection.......................................................................................18 6. Do Not Track – DNT Header...............................................................................18 7. Universal Fonts list usage....................................................................................18 NONYM!ZER – Anti-Fingerprinting Tool..................................................................21 Anoymize UA String...............................................................................................22 Anoymize Canvas....................................................................................................25 How does Canvas fingerprinting happen?..........................................................25 Experiment...................................................................................................................29 Test Environment Preparations................................................................................29 Detailed steps on how to setup each environment:.............................................31 Performance Evaluation...............................................................................................33 VIII Test Results Comparison.........................................................................................33 Individual environment evaluation:.........................................................................35 Across environments evaluation:.............................................................................36 Conclusion....................................................................................................................37 Future Work..................................................................................................................38 Appendix A...................................................................................................................39 NONYM!ZER Web Extension Code.......................................................................39 References....................................................................................................................
Abstract: Back in the early days of the Internet, web content (for example web site) was designed and hosted by a single entity or organization. Web pages were mainly developed to share knowledge, news, data to the public. The main objective of the Internet was to connect the world. It was never meant to target third-parties. With the continuous and aggressive competition in advertising businesses, uncontrollably desires have emerged to identify and classify consumers. It is proven that companies must have a clear definition of its target market. Based on this we have seen different ways to identify, analyze, and track consumers, either voluntarily or without their consent. Not only recent compelled regulations have radically restrained Cookies usage but also increased people knowledge and awareness have been playing a fundamental part. This have put lots of pressure on enterprises to find alternatives to bridge this gap and satisfy business demands. Since then fingerprinting have gained enormous popularity. Browser fingerprinting techniques have evolved from being privacyfriendly to privacy intrusive to serve these demands. This also has pushed privacy concerned people to save no effort to advance countermeasures. In this thesis we introduce different browser fingerprinting techniques and their relevant technologies in the wild. It additionally elaborates widely known countermeasures. we introduce “nonym!zer” as a mitigation framework for browser fingerprinting. It helps to hinder or impede browser fingerprinting on desktop browsers that web servers use such as WebGL or Canvas technologies.