Abstract-The website fingerprinting attack aims to identify the content (i.e., a webpage accessed by a client) of encrypted and anonymized connections by observing patterns of data flows such as packet size and direction. This attack can be performed by a local passive eavesdropper -one of the weakest adversaries in the attacker model of anonymization networks such as Tor.In this paper, we present a novel website fingerprinting attack. Based on a simple and comprehensible idea, our approach outperforms all state-of-the-art methods in terms of classification accuracy while being computationally dramatically more efficient. In order to evaluate the severity of the website fingerprinting attack in reality, we collected the most representative dataset that has ever been built, where we avoid simplified assumptions made in the related work regarding selection and type of webpages and the size of the universe. Using this data, we explore the practical limits of website fingerprinting at Internet scale. Although our novel approach is by orders of magnitude computationally more efficient and superior in terms of detection accuracy, for the first time we show that no existing method -including our own -scales when applied in realistic settings. With our analysis, we explore neglected aspects of the attack and investigate the realistic probability of success for different strategies a real-world adversary may follow.
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is in effect since May of 2018. As one of the most comprehensive pieces of legislation concerning privacy, it sparked a lot of discussion on the effect it would have on users and providers of online services in particular, due to the large amount of personal data processed in this context. Almost three years later, we are interested in revisiting this question to summarize the impact this new regulation has had on actors in the World Wide Web. Using Scopus, we obtain a vast corpus of academic work to survey studies related to changes on websites since and around the time the GDPR went into force. Our findings show that the emphasis on privacy increased w.r.t. online services, but plenty potential for improvements remains. Although online services are on average more transparent regarding data processing practices in their public data policies, a majority of these policies still either lack information required by the GDPR (e.g., contact information for users to file privacy inquiries) or do not provide this information in a user-friendly form. Additionally, we summarize that online services more often provide means for their users to opt out of data processing, but regularly obstruct convenient access to such means through unnecessarily complex and sometimes illegitimate interface design. Our survey further details that this situation contradicts the preferences expressed by users both verbally and through their actions, and researchers have proposed multiple approaches to facilitate GDPR-conform data processing without negatively impacting the user experience. Thus, we compiled reoccurring points of criticism by privacy researchers and data protection authorities into a list of four guidelines for service providers to consider.
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