Attacking HTTPS Secure Search Service through Correlation Analysis of HTTP Webpages Accessed

Abstract

It is very common for Internet users to query a search engine when retrieving web information. Sensitive data about search engine user's intentions or behavior can be inferred from his query phrases and the webpages he visits subsequently. In order to protect contents of communications from being eavesdropped, a search engine can adopt HTTPS-by-default to provide bidirectional encryption to protect its users' privacy. Since the majority of webpages indexed in search engine's results pages are still on HTTPenabled websites and the contents of these webpages can be observed by attackers once the user click on the indexed web-links. We propose a novel approach for attacking secure search through correlating analysis of encrypted search with unencrypted webpages the user visits subsequently. We show that a simple weighted TF-DF mechanism is sufficient for selecting guessing phrase candidates. Imitating search engine users, by querying these candidates and enumerating webpages indexed in results pages, we can hit the definite query phrases and meanwhile reconstruct user's web-surfing trails through DNS-based URLs comparison and flow feature statistics-based network traffic analysis. In the experiment including 180 Chinese and English search phrases, we achieved 67.78% hit rate at first guess and 96.11% hit rate within three guesses. Our empirical research shows that HTTPS traffic can be correlated and de-anonymized through HTTP traffic and secure search of search engine is not always secure unless HTTPS-by-default enabled everywhere.

Interpreting Incidentally Identified Variants in Genes Associated With Heritable Cardiovascular Disease: A Scientific Statement From the American Heart Association

“…18,19 Considerable variability also exists in the quality of evidence supporting the role of many genes as causative of their associated disease. Therefore, multiple international groups, organized through ClinGen, 20 have performed evidence-based reassessments of gene validity for inherited CVD phenotypes. Although many genes have been reported to cause such conditions as long QT syndrome, Brugada syndrome, heritable cardiomyopathies, and others and are routinely included on clinical genetic testing panels, this curation of genes for clinical validity evidence has found that a much more limited group of genes have definitive or strong evidence for causing these conditions.…”

ChatGPT for Good? On Opportunities and Challenges of Large Language Models for Education

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Nitrous oxide‐induced myeloneuropathy

“…Our patients favored dramatically heavy misuse of nitrous oxide (on average 150 canisters per day for 9 months), in contrast to previous population studies of typical patterns of recreational nitrous oxide use (generally less than 10 canisters in one sitting, less than 10 times per year) [19]. The rise in nitrous oxide misuse in China from 2017 to 2018 has been attributed, by some, to these international students returning [20,21]; they are likely to be targeted by bulk‐sellers on social media [22]. Although a lack of legislation restricting access to nitrous oxide might compound the problem [22,23], this group could be amenable to education and early intervention.…”