A New Use For Browser Fingerprints: Defeating Spoofing (browserprint.info)
AnonymousCube writes: Researchers at the University of Adelaide have found a new use for browser fingerprints: uncovering and defeating spoofing by web browsers. By using machine learning on browser fingerprints they were able to correctly guess the OS or browser family of a browser 90% of the time, and defeat operating system and browser family spoofing 76% of the time. This was done with small training sets of less than 1000 fingerprints, so accuracy with a much larger training set, like the size of the EFF's Panopticlick database should give even better results; you can help prove this, and see what their site thinks your browser family and OS is, by submitting your fingerprint to their site.
We now have to evolve the better mouse.
Dear fingerprinters: It might surprise you, but we don't want this to happen. We want the non-mobile version of your damn webpage on our mobile phone if we go out of our way to pretend we're not on a mobile device. Because guess what: Your mobile version almost invariably sucks and is unusable. Forcing us to use what YOU want us to use instead of allowing us to choose what WE want to choose leads to us not using your service at all.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The javascript implementation in any every browser is so different, I cant imagine its difficult to check what works and is supported and report this back directly.
Thanks guys. By 'defeating' UA spoofing you've just made it harder to develop for the web.
If a user has gone to the trouble of configuring a browser (or plugin) to spoof which browser they are using, why would I want to help researchers circumvent that?
If there's a good reason to defeat an intentional user choice, I'd love to hear it.
Help! Help! I'm being repressed!
You do not call it "fighting spoofing". You must call it "reducing privacy, usability and anonymity". Doesn't sound so good now, does it?
n/t
The client should only send requests, it should never reply to the servers requests.
I am running Firefox 45.9.0 with NoScript and the site thinks it is IE.
Tim S.
Your user-agent string specifies your browser as being a variant of FIREFOX.
Judging by your fingerprint we believe your browser is a variant of IE.
There are many valid reasons to spoof a browser, that are completely legal. I can't think of many illegal reasons to do so that would be very useful, when looking at the big picture. Privacy and access would be they biggest. What new corporate overlord propaganda, is the a preface to?
Stop fingerprinting AND fake another OS. Create your anonymous profile at ffprofile.com. Only for firefox.
Palemoon + Addons:
Cookie Monster - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-...
RequestPolicy - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-...
NoScript - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-...
Secret Agent - https://www.dephormation.org.u...
No java, no flash. Good luck finger printing that.
//browserprint.info/view?source1=UUID&UUID1UUID=55bd912a-d525-4ccf-b735-551c28616c2e
Really then, users of obscure platforms are more easily identified and fingered than users of more common platforms. In my case, W10M/Edge mean that my browser on my stock phone are unique of all their Data so far. But a user of an iPhone/safari or android/chrome wouldn't be so easily identified. So out of 34k samples, as stock Lumia 950XL is unique... That's concerning.
I've said this too many times, and I really don't know what to write that would be a thoughtful comment. All I know to do for now, and have done for nearly a decade, is use VPN, Tor, and DNSCrypt, and hope that all I've done so far will be enough to mud-up things, at least for a while, for when it gets really bad. The Internet used to be like the U.S. was in its infancy, a self-reliant frontier of sorts, and now we're are all statistics once again to be ruled and manipulated by governments that don't know what they're doing because the banking puppet strings are wrapped around too tight. Every so often, humanity is required to go through a "transcendental" phase in order to prevent catastrophe brought by too much change at once. One of the best ways to have done this is through cultural exchange. Unfortunately, leaders keep deciding to let this transcendence happen after wars or international economic gain. The Internet could provide a safe and anonymous way of doing this, but not anymore. The only reason there hasn't been a major war in while, regardless of the who's in charge right now, is because everyone with a social media account has been conditioned to be compliant. You know how your grandparents react when they have to pay for water? Look at the current generation now.
I tried it. It pops up a page that says "Please wait..." with an icon to "Get Adobe Flash". That's it.
So yet again, it's a malicious technique that only works with the active cooperation of the target. Do not volunteer to run malicious payloads, and you are apparently safe from this.
Now we need a spoofing AI to defeat the anti-spoofing AI, thus recovering our privacy.
People didn't like paying for water as late as in 2000: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I am becoming more and more convinced we need a butlerian jihad. At the least, perhaps we need to all go back to using Lynx as our browser. Does there really need to be actuve content on a web page? Just send me the text, with appropriate markup and I can read it just fine. Why do I need to stream audio or video in my browser? Why do I need moving anything? Go back to seperate apps. i can stream audio an application, I can watch video in an application, I can do both at the same time, or should be able to.
Here is a clue, I do not care about some socks, I used to care about winsocks, but have not this century.
I do not care about what celebrity x looks like now, I do not care about asains dating, I do not care about some ford dealership in southern lithuania or any place else. I certainly do not need to see 40 ads for the printer I bought 2 months ago. Here is a big clue, I already bought it, is it so crappy that I need to buy another one now 2 months later and if so, why would I buy the same one?
Though my User-Agent header clearly says: "FreeBSD", the site claimed, my OS is "likely Windows" :)
Other than that, yes, it is quite amazing, how much info is available to the JavaScript code...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I tried the site. I have javascript disable, so most of the detections did not work. However, I was still "unique". The biggest data leak seemed to be screen size, which it detected accurately and they gave it "1 in 205".
Is there a plugin available to spoof this value?
That's even more identifiable, because in a world where everything is identifiable only FSF nerds care enough to install all that crap.
Using Sandboxed Opera (Sandboxie) and Opera's built in VPN, it guessed my browser was Chrome.
I use the current version of Firefox (53.0.02) and a lot of addons. The OS I ran the test with is Windows 8.1. Two thirds of the time, the test listed Linux or BSD.
Why help these idiots?
Unless panopticlick is lying to me disabling javascript does wonders for you fingerprinting situation.