CAREER: Tracking on the Modern Web: Novel Attacks, Measurements, and Defenses

University Of Illinois At Chicago, Chicago IL

Investigators

Abstract

The web has become integral to everyday life, revolutionizing how personal and professional activities are conducted. At the heart of the web ecosystem lie browsers, which have evolved into complex application platforms with an ever-expanding set of capabilities. However, the deployment of new features also introduces new avenues for invading users’ privacy. This project focuses on enhancing the privacy protections available to users during their online activities, by developing robust defenses and privacy-preserving mechanisms. The underlying research necessitates designing and developing novel techniques and systems for analyzing browsers’ capabilities, uncovering how they can be misused for tracking or re-identifying users across first and third party contexts, and detecting attacks in the wild. This includes implementing static and dynamic analysis systems for orchestrating web browsers and applications, and developing browser-agnostic techniques and modular frameworks that advance the state-of-the-art in browser-feature and application-feature auditing and testing. This project will investigate, evaluate, and tackle the privacy threats affecting browsers through an in-depth and comprehensive analysis of a wide range of browser features and functionalities. This will enable the forecasting and prevention of privacy-invasive attacks, resulting in tangible benefits for end users, as well as the private and government sector. The main research problems that this project studies will form the basis for the training of both undergraduate and graduate students. The outcomes of this research will improve the research community's understanding of user tracking and privacy invasion on the web, and will be widely disseminated through academic publications, curriculum integration, and media articles. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.