Determinando o risco de Fingerprinting em páginas Web

Abstract

Fingerprinting techniques are those used to identify (or re-identify) a user or device with a set of attributes (device screen size, versions of installed software, among many others) and other observable characteristics during the communication process. Commonly known by Website fingerprinting, such techniques can be used as a security measure (in user authentication, for example) and as a mechanism for sales / marketing. However, they can also be considered a potential threat to Web users’ privacy, since personal and sensitive data can be captured and used for malicious purposes in various types of attacks and fraud. In this context, this work proposes a methodology to detect fingerprinting artifacts in Web pages and measure the level of severity to user privacy. The results show that although simple, the method is effective to find fingerprinting codes in websites and categorizing them in severity levels.