IUPTIS: A Practical, Cache-resistant Fingerprinting Technique for Dynamic Webpages

Mariano Di Martino, Pieter Robyns, Peter Quax, Wim Lamotte

2018

Abstract

Webpage fingerprinting allows an adversary to infer the webpages visited by an end user over an encrypted channel by means of network traffic analysis. If such techniques are applied to websites that contain user profiles (e.g. booking platforms), they can be used for personal identification and pose a clear privacy threat. In this paper, a novel HTTPS webpage fingerprinting method - IUPTIS - is presented, which accomplishes precisely this, through identification and analysis of unique image sequences. It improves upon previous work by being able to fingerprint webpages containing dynamic rather than just static content, making it applicable to e.g. social network pages as well. At the same time, it is not hindered by the presence of caching and does not require knowledge of the specific browser being used. Several accuracy-increasing parameters are integrated that can be tuned according to the specifics of the adversary model and targeted online platform. To quantify the real-world applicability of the IUPTIS method, experiments have been conducted on two popular online platforms. Favorable results were achieved, with a F1 scores between of 82% and 98%, depending on the parameters used. This makes the method practically viable as a means for personal identification.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Di Martino M., Robyns P., Quax P. and Lamotte W. (2018). IUPTIS: A Practical, Cache-resistant Fingerprinting Technique for Dynamic Webpages.In Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies - Volume 1: WEBIST, ISBN 978-989-758-324-7, pages 102-112. DOI: 10.5220/0007226501020112

in Bibtex Style

@conference{webist18,
author={Mariano Di Martino and Pieter Robyns and Peter Quax and Wim Lamotte},
title={IUPTIS: A Practical, Cache-resistant Fingerprinting Technique for Dynamic Webpages},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies - Volume 1: WEBIST,},
year={2018},
pages={102-112},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0007226501020112},
isbn={978-989-758-324-7},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies - Volume 1: WEBIST,
TI - IUPTIS: A Practical, Cache-resistant Fingerprinting Technique for Dynamic Webpages
SN - 978-989-758-324-7
AU - Di Martino M.
AU - Robyns P.
AU - Quax P.
AU - Lamotte W.
PY - 2018
SP - 102
EP - 112
DO - 10.5220/0007226501020112