6 ms·

Anonymous Browser Fingerprinting in Practice

55 points by SanderMak 13y ago

gregod 13y ago
Related project matching against a database of >3Mio. fingerprints: https://panopticlick.eff.org/ https://panopticlick.eff.org/
- alcuadrado 13y ago
  Did you even read the article? They link that in the first sentence.
ojilles 13y ago
The operational problem with these things is how do you deal with time? Over time folks upgrade plugins/browsers etc, making it not match the previous fingerprint. Therefore you won't be able to stitch two sessions together as belong to one person (who did the upgrade in between). Sounds to me directly opposing the core idea behind these techniques. (E.g. bringing it from unique identifier to persistent unique identifier)
- Homunculiheaded 13y ago
  If you read the actual paper referenced [0] you'll see that they explicitly mention this. Since they assumed that users were interactively trying to change their foot print, the looked at uses who had changed their settings within 1-2 hours: "We ran our algorithm over the set of users whose cookies indicated that they were returning to the site 1-2 hours or more after their first visit, and who now had a different fingerprint. Excluding users whose fingerprints changed because they disabled javascript (a common case in response to visiting panopticlick.eff.org, but perhaps not so common in the real world), our heuristic made a correct guess in 65% of cases, an incorrect guess in 0.56% of cases, and no guess in 35% of cases. 99.1% of guesses were correct, while the false positive rate was 0.86%. Our algorithm was clearly very crude, and no doubt could be significantly improved with effort." (any typos here are likely the result of copy/pasting from the pdf) 0. https://panopticlick.eff.org/browser-uniqueness.pdf https://panopticlick.eff.org/browser-uniqueness.pdf
  - ojilles 13y ago
    Missed that, but basically confirms the point (not being able to track ~35% of the cases is quite a big gap)
- fingerprinter 13y ago
  This was/is a tough issue. The easiest way, tbh, is to look at patterns for that fingerprint(s) rather than assume they are all unique. This is where a rules engine comes into play. The "real" way to do this is to track upgrading components (like plugins etc) and create new fingerprints as they evolve, associate them with the old ones and over time sunset old fingerprints. This is harder to do in practice, though. Also, some fingerprinting approaches track things like monitor resolution, which is tough b/c a docked laptop has a different fingerprint than the same undocked laptop. So the approach differs based on what you track.
Renaud 13y ago
One way to counter browser fingerprinting could be to add a plugin that simply report random data when queried. This would invalidate the hashing. Of course, if the plugin is well known, it could be removed by the fingerprinting code, unless it can disguise itself as something else -more or less random- when it is installed.
- morpher 13y ago
  Wouldn't a better solution be to simply modify the bowser to report some base set of fonts / plugins (and any other high-information content fields)? How many sites actually legitimately serve different content based on your fonts or plugins? Also, the UA string could be simplified to reveal less.
- fingerprinter 13y ago
  I just have a couple of personal plugins that will change my reported UA slightly, my fonts collection slightly and some other random bits. Just screws it up enough so I know I'm not tracked.
  - ilikepi 13y ago
    Would you consider releasing these, or are you concerned if they were more common they would become less effective?
- peterwwillis 13y ago
  Nope, already thought of, and not for what you'd expect. Authentication systems using Browser ID create a value based on the browser identification bits and apply a ratio of how close the value is to a given user's fingerprint, so your values may change (like when you resize your screen) but it'll approximate the fingerprint as the user's. In other words, if it's close, it still matches.
ihsw 13y ago
I'm curious as to how many fingerprints match multiple users, which could be used to detect users logging into multiple accounts. This could be useful for detecting compromised accounts, or for banning all of the accounts belonging to a user trying to evade bans.
- morpher 13y ago
  Wouldn't all default install browser installations on the same model of fresh-from-the-box laptops be identical? They quoted a 10-15% false match rate (excluding mobile phones which have a much higher false match rate due to lower configurability).
  - D9u 13y ago
    The first thing I do when I get a new laptop is wipe the hdd and install my preferred OS, which entails also installing my favorite browsers. (My OS choice doesn't come with a browser, or much else it's all up to the end user) As for mobile devices, here too I always install my preferred software, so I don't see how mobile devices have lower configurability. That said, there exists databases with which one may at least identify the mobile device in order to serve up content appropriate for that device. Alas, my tendencies make my devices uniquely identifiable! (From Panopticlick) Your browser fingerprint appears to be unique among the 3,140,429 tested so far. Currently, we estimate that your browser has a fingerprint that conveys at least 21.58 bits of identifying information. That's for FreeBSD running Xombrero.
    - morpher 13y ago
      Sure, but average computer users probably have a much more default configuration, and thus the probability of unique match goes down. That being said, people who tend to be worried about security also tend to have more unique computing configurations and thus would be more identifiable. Interesting.
excitom 13y ago
Security firms that sell this kind of service tout its accuracy, like it's going to prevent fraud by uniquely identifying everyone. Interesting that the author notes they stopped using it because of poor results.
Geee 13y ago
> Very few users have a staggering amount of fingerprints, for example 20-25. I don’t know if they have a lot of devices, use different browsers or something else. They probably use mostly public / school computers to access the website.
- phaer 13y ago
  Or maybe they are just changing their browser windows size by hand, which would lead to a lot of different resolutions.
  - CiaranMcNulty 13y ago
    He's hopefully using screen width (window.screen.availHeight) rather than browser width (window.screen.height)
- infinita740 13y ago
  Or maybe those accounts are shared ones. It's common practice for kids to share accounts so they don't have to buy everything.
stesch 13y ago
NoScript to the rescue, again.
- patrickaljord 13y ago
  User-agent, ip, country of origin etc can be obtained server-side by reading web server logs. What you can do is change your user-agent manually, use different proxies to get another IP etc. tl;dr: do a lot work that will make you waste time and bandwidth (proxies are slow and/or costly).
- fingerprinter 13y ago
  In practice this is not effective, for as someone else noted, tracking can and is done at server level as well. Most implementations, though, make the assumption that if they get JS info, that info is good. Better to give them wrong/inaccurate/changing JS info than no info. So, I leave JS on, use some personal plugins to change variables and give them bad data on each request. They won't know and will just get bad fingerprints that are not seen again. See this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6046810 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6046810
  - bincat 13y ago
    Would it be possible have the source of those plugins open?
gnosis 13y ago
And for anyone who hasn't tried it yet, here's EFF's site for testing how unique your browser's fingerprint is: https://panopticlick.eff.org https://panopticlick.eff.org
fingerprinter 13y ago
When these things come up on HN I pipe up a bit. I wrote several implementations of passive device fingerprinting for fraud/security firms and they are implemented across a broad range of industries and companies. I know quite a bit about the shortcomings of these and the challenges faced, in case someone is interested. Also, just FYI, the big use these days is actually NOT in security or fraud, though most of the companies selling these still say that is the case. The use is in advertising. Most of the companies selling these still call themselves "security" or "fraud" companies, but the revenues from advertising are far outpacing the former categories.
- charonn0 13y ago
  Have the fraud and security markets shrunk, or has the advertising market expanded?
  - fingerprinter 13y ago
    I think is has to do more with the role of security/fraud in companies vs advertising. For instance, security doesn't get much attention and people view it as a necessary evil. Fraud is about loss prevention in most cases, so the way you show your value is how much you save the company in loses. Your revenue is typically a fraction of those savings. Most companies using tracking in advertising are still operating at a loss or have fuzzier ideas of "revenue". TBH, advertising is weird. People spend money like water without really knowing what they are getting in return. This obviously won't last, but there is money to be made in the meantime. At least that is my experience.
- Revisor 13y ago
  What are some of the challenges you mention?
ericcholis 13y ago
Just a side note, I was momentarily confused regarding the author of this article. I had thought that it was Valve Software's github account. It took visiting https://github.com/Valve/ https://github.com/Valve/ to realize that it was a private account.
Amadou 13y ago
I've been thinking about developing a browser plugin that would spoof fingerprints. Based on the URL in the address bar it would keep a discreet cookie-store and fuzzed version of the variables that fingerprinting looks at. For example - if you are on espn.com then espn.com and all the trackers referenced from their pages would see a set of cookies and variables specific to espn.com. Browse over to icanhascheezeburger.com and even if the lolcats use the same trackers as espn.com does they would see a different set of cookies and a slightly different set of values - like browserid incremented by a .1 or a couple of non-essential plugins missing from the list of installed plugins. I welcome any technical feedback on the idea.
jamesbrennan 13y ago
I don't feel like this could accurately identify a return user as browsers such as Google Chrome have an auto updater that goes so often. The version number could likely be different when returning a few days later. Does anyone have thoughts about this?

55 points by SanderMak 13y ago

Related project matching against a database of >3Mio. fingerprints: https://panopticlick.eff.org/ https://panopticlick.eff.org/

alcuadrado 13y ago
Did you even read the article? They link that in the first sentence.

ojilles 13y ago

The operational problem with these things is how do you deal with time? Over time folks upgrade plugins/browsers etc, making it not match the previous fingerprint. Therefore you won't be able to stitch two sessions together as belong to one person (who did the upgrade in between). Sounds to me directly opposing the core idea behind these techniques. (E.g. bringing it from unique identifier to persistent unique identifier)

Homunculiheaded 13y ago
If you read the actual paper referenced [0] you'll see that they explicitly mention this. Since they assumed that users were interactively trying to change their foot print, the looked at uses who had changed their settings within 1-2 hours: "We ran our algorithm over the set of users whose cookies indicated that they were returning to the site 1-2 hours or more after their first visit, and who now had a different fingerprint. Excluding users whose fingerprints changed because they disabled javascript (a common case in response to visiting panopticlick.eff.org, but perhaps not so common in the real world), our heuristic made a correct guess in 65% of cases, an incorrect guess in 0.56% of cases, and no guess in 35% of cases. 99.1% of guesses were correct, while the false positive rate was 0.86%. Our algorithm was clearly very crude, and no doubt could be significantly improved with effort." (any typos here are likely the result of copy/pasting from the pdf) 0. https://panopticlick.eff.org/browser-uniqueness.pdf https://panopticlick.eff.org/browser-uniqueness.pdf
- ojilles 13y ago
  Missed that, but basically confirms the point (not being able to track ~35% of the cases is quite a big gap)
fingerprinter 13y ago
This was/is a tough issue. The easiest way, tbh, is to look at patterns for that fingerprint(s) rather than assume they are all unique. This is where a rules engine comes into play. The "real" way to do this is to track upgrading components (like plugins etc) and create new fingerprints as they evolve, associate them with the old ones and over time sunset old fingerprints. This is harder to do in practice, though. Also, some fingerprinting approaches track things like monitor resolution, which is tough b/c a docked laptop has a different fingerprint than the same undocked laptop. So the approach differs based on what you track.

Renaud 13y ago

One way to counter browser fingerprinting could be to add a plugin that simply report random data when queried. This would invalidate the hashing. Of course, if the plugin is well known, it could be removed by the fingerprinting code, unless it can disguise itself as something else -more or less random- when it is installed.

morpher 13y ago
Wouldn't a better solution be to simply modify the bowser to report some base set of fonts / plugins (and any other high-information content fields)? How many sites actually legitimately serve different content based on your fonts or plugins? Also, the UA string could be simplified to reveal less.
fingerprinter 13y ago
I just have a couple of personal plugins that will change my reported UA slightly, my fonts collection slightly and some other random bits. Just screws it up enough so I know I'm not tracked.
- ilikepi 13y ago
  Would you consider releasing these, or are you concerned if they were more common they would become less effective?
peterwwillis 13y ago
Nope, already thought of, and not for what you'd expect. Authentication systems using Browser ID create a value based on the browser identification bits and apply a ratio of how close the value is to a given user's fingerprint, so your values may change (like when you resize your screen) but it'll approximate the fingerprint as the user's. In other words, if it's close, it still matches.

ihsw 13y ago

I'm curious as to how many fingerprints match multiple users, which could be used to detect users logging into multiple accounts. This could be useful for detecting compromised accounts, or for banning all of the accounts belonging to a user trying to evade bans.

morpher 13y ago
Wouldn't all default install browser installations on the same model of fresh-from-the-box laptops be identical? They quoted a 10-15% false match rate (excluding mobile phones which have a much higher false match rate due to lower configurability).
- D9u 13y ago
  The first thing I do when I get a new laptop is wipe the hdd and install my preferred OS, which entails also installing my favorite browsers. (My OS choice doesn't come with a browser, or much else it's all up to the end user) As for mobile devices, here too I always install my preferred software, so I don't see how mobile devices have lower configurability. That said, there exists databases with which one may at least identify the mobile device in order to serve up content appropriate for that device. Alas, my tendencies make my devices uniquely identifiable! (From Panopticlick) Your browser fingerprint appears to be unique among the 3,140,429 tested so far. Currently, we estimate that your browser has a fingerprint that conveys at least 21.58 bits of identifying information. That's for FreeBSD running Xombrero.
  - morpher 13y ago
    Sure, but average computer users probably have a much more default configuration, and thus the probability of unique match goes down. That being said, people who tend to be worried about security also tend to have more unique computing configurations and thus would be more identifiable. Interesting.

excitom 13y ago

Security firms that sell this kind of service tout its accuracy, like it's going to prevent fraud by uniquely identifying everyone. Interesting that the author notes they stopped using it because of poor results.

Geee 13y ago

> Very few users have a staggering amount of fingerprints, for example 20-25. I don’t know if they have a lot of devices, use different browsers or something else. They probably use mostly public / school computers to access the website.

phaer 13y ago
Or maybe they are just changing their browser windows size by hand, which would lead to a lot of different resolutions.
- CiaranMcNulty 13y ago
  He's hopefully using screen width (window.screen.availHeight) rather than browser width (window.screen.height)
infinita740 13y ago
Or maybe those accounts are shared ones. It's common practice for kids to share accounts so they don't have to buy everything.

stesch 13y ago

NoScript to the rescue, again.

patrickaljord 13y ago
User-agent, ip, country of origin etc can be obtained server-side by reading web server logs. What you can do is change your user-agent manually, use different proxies to get another IP etc. tl;dr: do a lot work that will make you waste time and bandwidth (proxies are slow and/or costly).
fingerprinter 13y ago
In practice this is not effective, for as someone else noted, tracking can and is done at server level as well. Most implementations, though, make the assumption that if they get JS info, that info is good. Better to give them wrong/inaccurate/changing JS info than no info. So, I leave JS on, use some personal plugins to change variables and give them bad data on each request. They won't know and will just get bad fingerprints that are not seen again. See this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6046810 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6046810
- bincat 13y ago
  Would it be possible have the source of those plugins open?

gnosis 13y ago

And for anyone who hasn't tried it yet, here's EFF's site for testing how unique your browser's fingerprint is: https://panopticlick.eff.org https://panopticlick.eff.org

fingerprinter 13y ago

When these things come up on HN I pipe up a bit. I wrote several implementations of passive device fingerprinting for fraud/security firms and they are implemented across a broad range of industries and companies. I know quite a bit about the shortcomings of these and the challenges faced, in case someone is interested. Also, just FYI, the big use these days is actually NOT in security or fraud, though most of the companies selling these still say that is the case. The use is in advertising. Most of the companies selling these still call themselves "security" or "fraud" companies, but the revenues from advertising are far outpacing the former categories.

charonn0 13y ago
Have the fraud and security markets shrunk, or has the advertising market expanded?
- fingerprinter 13y ago
  I think is has to do more with the role of security/fraud in companies vs advertising. For instance, security doesn't get much attention and people view it as a necessary evil. Fraud is about loss prevention in most cases, so the way you show your value is how much you save the company in loses. Your revenue is typically a fraction of those savings. Most companies using tracking in advertising are still operating at a loss or have fuzzier ideas of "revenue". TBH, advertising is weird. People spend money like water without really knowing what they are getting in return. This obviously won't last, but there is money to be made in the meantime. At least that is my experience.
Revisor 13y ago
What are some of the challenges you mention?

ericcholis 13y ago

Just a side note, I was momentarily confused regarding the author of this article. I had thought that it was Valve Software's github account. It took visiting https://github.com/Valve/ https://github.com/Valve/ to realize that it was a private account.

Amadou 13y ago

I've been thinking about developing a browser plugin that would spoof fingerprints. Based on the URL in the address bar it would keep a discreet cookie-store and fuzzed version of the variables that fingerprinting looks at. For example - if you are on espn.com then espn.com and all the trackers referenced from their pages would see a set of cookies and variables specific to espn.com. Browse over to icanhascheezeburger.com and even if the lolcats use the same trackers as espn.com does they would see a different set of cookies and a slightly different set of values - like browserid incremented by a .1 or a couple of non-essential plugins missing from the list of installed plugins. I welcome any technical feedback on the idea.

jamesbrennan 13y ago

I don't feel like this could accurately identify a return user as browsers such as Google Chrome have an auto updater that goes so often. The version number could likely be different when returning a few days later. Does anyone have thoughts about this?