An Empirical Analysis of Web Storage and its Applications to Web Tracking

IF 2.6 4区计算机科学 Q2 COMPUTER SCIENCE, INFORMATION SYSTEMS

ACM Transactions on the Web Pub Date : 2023-09-09 DOI:10.1145/3623382

Zubair Ahmad, Samuele Casarin, Stefano Calzavara

引用次数: 0

Abstract

In this article we present a large-scale empirical analysis of the use of web storage in the wild. By using dynamic taint tracking at the level of JavaScript and by performing an automated classification of the detected information flows, we shed light on the key characteristics of web storage uses in the Tranco Top 10k. Our analysis shows that web storage is routinely accessed by third parties, including known web trackers, who are particularly eager to have both read and write access to persistent web storage information. We then deep dive in web tracking as a prominent case study: our analysis shows that web storage is not yet as popular as cookies for tracking purposes, however taint tracking is useful to detect potential new trackers not included in standard filter lists. Moreover, we observe that many websites do not comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) directives when it comes to their use of web storage.

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Web存储的实证分析及其在Web跟踪中的应用

在这篇文章中，我们对网络存储的使用进行了大规模的实证分析。通过在JavaScript级别使用动态污染跟踪，并对检测到的信息流执行自动分类，我们揭示了Tranco Top 10k中web存储使用的关键特征。我们的分析表明，网络存储经常被第三方访问，包括已知的网络跟踪者，他们特别渴望对持久的网络存储信息进行读写访问。然后，我们深入研究了网络跟踪作为一个突出的案例研究:我们的分析表明，网络存储在跟踪目的方面还没有cookie那么流行，然而，污染跟踪对于检测未包含在标准过滤列表中的潜在新跟踪器是有用的。此外，我们观察到许多网站在使用网络存储时不遵守通用数据保护条例(GDPR)指令。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

ACM Transactions on the Web 工程技术-计算机：软件工程

CiteScore

4.90

自引率

0.00%

发文量

审稿时长

7.5 months

期刊介绍： Transactions on the Web (TWEB) is a journal publishing refereed articles reporting the results of research on Web content, applications, use, and related enabling technologies. Topics in the scope of TWEB include but are not limited to the following: Browsers and Web Interfaces; Electronic Commerce; Electronic Publishing; Hypertext and Hypermedia; Semantic Web; Web Engineering; Web Services; and Service-Oriented Computing XML. In addition, papers addressing the intersection of the following broader technologies with the Web are also in scope: Accessibility; Business Services Education; Knowledge Management and Representation; Mobility and pervasive computing; Performance and scalability; Recommender systems; Searching, Indexing, Classification, Retrieval and Querying, Data Mining and Analysis; Security and Privacy; and User Interfaces. Papers discussing specific Web technologies, applications, content generation and management and use are within scope. Also, papers describing novel applications of the web as well as papers on the underlying technologies are welcome.