No boundaries: data exfiltration by third parties embedded on web pages
Authors: Gunes Acar (imec-COSIC KU Leuven), Steven Englehardt (Mozilla), Arvind Narayanan (Princeton University)
Volume: 2020
Issue: 4
Pages: 220–238
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/popets-2020-0070
Abstract: We investigate data exfiltration by third-party scripts directly embedded on web pages. Specifically, we study three attacks: misuse of browsers’ internal login managers, social data exfiltration, and whole-DOM exfiltration. Although the possibility of these attacks was well known, we provide the first empirical evidence based on measurements of 300,000 distinct web pages from 50,000 sites. We extend OpenWPM’s instrumentation to detect and precisely attribute these attacks to specific third-party scripts. Our analysis reveals invasive practices such as inserting invisible login forms to trigger autofilling of the saved user credentials, and reading and exfiltrating social network data when the user logs in via Facebook login. Further, we uncovered password, credit card, and health data leaks to third parties due to wholesale collection of the DOM. We discuss the lessons learned from the responses to the initial disclosure of our findings and fixes that were deployed by the websites, browser vendors, third-party libraries and privacy protection tools.
Keywords: JavaScript, privacy, tracking
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