FROST: Your Disk Drive Is The Snitch
protonprivacy.substack.com
Most of the surveillance stories we’ve looked at here lately have involved things you can at least see when you walk past them: cameras at the gate, sensors on the shelf, a label adjusting a price as you move through space.
  • DominusOfMegadeus@sh.itjust.works
    1·
    5 months ago

    The researchers responsibly disclosed FROST to Google, Apple, and Mozilla before publishing. The responses are worth reading carefully:

    • Google said it does not consider browser fingerprinting to be a security vulnerability.

    • Apple described the attack as “currently out of scope,” with possible mitigations in the future.

    • Mozilla acknowledged the findings but has not implemented any fix.

    In other words, the three companies that ship some of the world’s most-used browsers have collectively said “ok, not my concern”.

    Fingerprinting is treated as a known cost of doing business on the modern web, and a side channel that leaks tab and application data through a storage API is, apparently, not a fire worth putting out.

  • Joël de Bruijn@lemmy.ml
    0·
    5 months ago

    Oh wow … stating this is just regular fingerprinting is out of touch.

    Its like my electric energy supplier analyzing current data and knowing brand, model and type of dishwasher and fridge. Which they can.

    • unwarlikeExtortion@lemmy.ml
      0·
      5 months ago

      That’s putting it mildly.

      It’s if they’d know the exact food in your fridge and where you got it from. Or the exact makeup of the clothes you buy. Oh, kid’s clothes? What a lovley daughter you have! Would you like some educational material targeted for 4-8 year-olds?

      And aren’t you expecting another one?

      Use a blender? What lovely strawberry milkshakes you like for breakfast. Why not tell the store most of your food comes from to raise their prices a bit, since it seems to be a trend in your city?

      Do you have meds in the fridge? Well, these items are often sold together, have a look. Oh, and a price increase.

        • unwarlikeExtortion@lemmy.ml
          1·
          3 months ago

          Late to reply, but

          Imagine if, like how app publishers can seemingly magically deploy arbitrary code and send data at a high speed to and from your devices, society and technology went in a similar way with appliances:

          Due to the obvious fire risk, all appliances need to be recorded. The recordings: accessible real-time to the fire department and yore utility suppliers. Don’t worry, installation of the beeded equipment is covered by the Stop The Spread of Fire association. You only pay a symbolic part of the real cost.

          Sounds dystopian, and it is.

          Hell, with the way some cashier-free stores are using solely scale-equipped shelves (no camera needed), a conclusion of "Why don’t we do that in OUR fridges by Samsung isn’t impossible. Give an eextended warranty and some bonus functionality like expiry tracking if the user registers their produce in the device’s built-in display. Then sell the data and profit.