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by netaustin 592 days ago
Very interesting and well-explained. Given that the research has been out for two years, any interested data collectors have considered this! Forget hackers, this an exploit for enterprises and governments!

Could websites concerned with privacy deploy a package that triggers interrupts randomly? Could a browser extension do it for every site?
2 comments
jackcook 591 days ago
Websites doing this would have to be careful about it: they might become the only website triggering a lot of interrupts randomly, which then makes them easy to identify.

Our countermeasure which triggers interrupts randomly is implemented as a browser extension, the source code for which is available here: https://github.com/jackcook/bigger-fish

I'm not sure I would recommend it for daily use though, I think our tests showed it slowed page load times down by about 10%.

link
vessenes 591 days ago
I'm on safari/macOS, and many of the counting related demonstrations did not vary as much as claimed -- some did, with significant computer use, but I'd bet some mitigations have been implemented already in Safari.

Nevertheless, EXTREMELY cool paper.

link