SS-FP: Browser Fingerprinting using HTML Parser Quirks

Erwan Abgrall, Yves Le Traon, Martin Monperrus, Sylvain Gombault, Mario Heiderich, Alain Ribault


Abstract

There are many scenarios in which inferring the type of a client browser is desirable, for instance to fight against session stealing. This is known as browser fingerprinting. This paper presents and evaluates a novel fingerprinting technique to determine the exact nature (browser type and version, eg Firefox 15) of a web-browser, exploiting HTML parser quirks exercised through XSS. Our experiments show that the exact version of a web browser can be determined with 71% of accuracy, and that only 6 tests are sufficient to quickly determine the exact family a web browser belongs to.

[Cornell University]

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