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

网络已经成为日常生活中不可或缺的一部分，彻底改变了个人和专业活动的开展方式。网络生态系统的核心是浏览器，它们已经演变成功能不断扩展的复杂应用程序平台。然而，新功能的部署也为侵犯用户隐私引入了新的途径。该项目的重点是通过制定强有力的防御和隐私保护机制，加强用户在在线活动期间可获得的隐私保护。基础研究需要设计和开发新的技术和系统来分析浏览器的功能，揭示它们如何被滥用来跨第一方和第三方上下文跟踪或重新识别用户，以及在野外检测攻击。这包括实施用于协调Web浏览器和应用程序的静态和动态分析系统，以及开发与浏览器无关的技术和模块化框架，以推动浏览器特性和应用程序特性审计和测试的最先进水平。该项目将通过对广泛的浏览器特性和功能进行深入和全面的分析，调查、评估和解决影响浏览器的隐私威胁。这将能够预测和预防侵犯隐私的攻击，从而为最终用户以及私营部门和政府部门带来切实的好处。本项目研究的主要研究问题将为本科生和研究生的培养奠定基础。这项研究的结果将提高研究社区对用户跟踪和网络隐私侵犯的理解，并将通过学术出版物、课程整合和媒体文章广泛传播。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.