[cbsks]

Looks like Firefox is immune.

This works by looking for web accessible resources that are provided by the extensions. For Chrome, these are are available in a webpage via the URL chrome-extension://[PACKAGE ID]/[PATH] https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/reference/manif...

On Firefox, web accessible resources are available at "moz-extension://<extension-UUID>/myfile.png" <extension-UUID> is not your extension's ID. This ID is randomly generated for every browser instance. This prevents websites from fingerprinting a browser by examining the extensions it has installed. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/Web...

[rchaud]

And they said that using a browser with sub-5% market share would cause us to miss out on the latest and greatest in web technology!

[userbinator]

The latest and greatest is not great for you, but for them.

[cranberryturkey]

The real friction in browser hopping isn't features — it's keeping your workflow portable. Bookmarks especially. Each browser has its own sync silo (Chrome → Google, Firefox → Mozilla, Safari → iCloud).

For multi-browser setups (Firefox for fingerprint resistance, Chrome for the sites that only work there), cross-browser bookmark sync is weirdly undersolved. Xbrowsersync, marksyncr, and a few others exist but most people don't know about them.

[timnetworks]

Anecdote: yesterday i exported my bookmarks into an html file and then asked for a script that will make a webpage out of them. with a search. and favicon download from domain. better than any bookmark bar imho.

[Bluecobra]

This is a great idea, thanks. I built an IPv6 only webhost in Digital Ocean a while ago as a learning exercise and it’s been sitting idle. Making a personal portal sounds like a fun project.

[johny115]

I use floccus.org to sync between Chrome and Zen browser, works flawlessly! It wasn't that difficut to find, once I had the two browser setup (as in the end I refufsed to fully switch to Zen), just searched extensions, and setup this up in a minute. It also syncs to google drive and bunch of 3rd party bookmark apps.

[cranberryturkey]

Checkout marksyncr.com for bookmarks

[dana321]

chrome was made by ex-firefox devs, chrome is still not as good!

[LAC-Tech]

Anecdotally, I sometimes notice my computer fan spinning ferociously... it's almost always because I have left a firefox tab with linkedin open somewhere.

Are they bit coin mining or are they just incompetent?

[kijin]

Judging from GP's description of how extension IDs work in Firefox, I wouldn't be surprised if LinkedIn were trying to brute-force those UUIDs!

[farhanhubble]

If the two are indeed "Linked", I see a case for users-first browsers to show system metrics right along the page.

[veyh]

I've noticed similar issues with the web version of MS Teams.

You can actually see what tabs are hogging CPU by pressing SHIFT-ESC to open the task manager (about:processes) inside Firefox.

[techpression]

Considering the app was a battery catastrophe I’m confident in the latter, even if your question could be read as rhetorical.

[Bluecobra]

It’s probably some feature they sell to recruiters to grab your attention. :)

[rob74]

Maybe it's trying (and failing) to access your browser extensions? In a loop?

[xhcuvuvyc]

It's ok, they can fingerprint you for using Firefox.

[jonners00]

Yeah, but they don't know which specific one of Firefox's last dozen users I am.

[nilslindemann]

Yes, is it now?

    https://fingerprint.com/
    https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/
    https://abrahamjuliot.github.io/creepjs/

I don't have Firefox or another browser installed right now, but the last time I checked, every browser was detected, especially on the first link.

Further, When I used Tor, a few sites, like Google, showed me Captchas for a while afterward, when using my _normal_ browser.

Further I heard that sites like PayPal are giving me black karma when I try to avoid Fingerprinting by using e.g. Tor.

[nilslindemann]

I actually don't even care too much if they try to detect, that I am the X from last time.

The issue is them selling the data, or using it in unrelated locations, or trying to detect me as a person. And their programmers are not enforced and rewarded when they report such behavior to law agencies / the public. And the law is not punishing it.

[awesome_dude]

This is probably a naive question, but...

Doesn't the idea of swapping extension specific IDs to your browser specific extension IDs mean that instead of your browser being identifiable, you become identifiable?

I mean, it goes from "Oh they have X, Y , and Z installed" to "Oh, it's jim bob, only he has that unique set of IDs for extensions"

[triceratops]

It's not a naive question. This comment says it's not possible to do that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46905213

[awesome_dude]

Oh, it's (re)randomised upon each restart, whew, thanks for the heads up

edit: er, I think that that also suggests that I need to restart firefox more often...

[tech234a]

The webpage would have to scan the entire UUID space to create this fingerprint, which seems unlikely.

[throwaway808081]

Just have a database of UUIDs. Seems pretty trivial to generate and sort as it's only 16 bytes each.

[pshirshov]

That's actually a bright idea! Have you ever thought about applying for VC funds?

Once you deliver that, you can also think about a database of natural numbers!

[stirfish]

lol

Let's go a step further and just iterate through them on the client. I plan on having this phone well past the heat death of the universe, so this is guaranteed to finish on my hardware.

  function* uuidIterator() {
   const bytes = new Uint8Array(16); 
   while (true) {
     yield formatUUID(bytes);

     let carry = 1;
     for (let i = 15; i >= 0 && carry; i--) {
       const sum = bytes[i] + carry;
       bytes[i] = sum & 0xff;
       carry = sum > 0xff ? 1 : 0;
     }
 
     if (carry) return;
   }
 }
 
 function formatUUID(b) {
   const hex = [...b].map(x => x.toString(16).padStart(2, "0"));
   return (
     hex.slice(0, 4).join("") + "-" +
     hex.slice(4, 6).join("") + "-" +
     hex.slice(6, 8).join("") + "-" +
     hex.slice(8, 10).join("") + "-" +
     hex.slice(10, 16).join("")
   );
 }

This is free. Feel free to use it in production.

[direwolf20]

It exists

https://everyuuid.com/

[Mikhail_Edoshin]

16 bytes is a lot. 4 bytes are within reach, we can scan all of them quickly, but even 8 bytes are already too much.

Kolmogorov said that computers do not help with naturally hard tasks; they raise a limit compared to what we can fo manually, but above that limit the task stays as hard is it was.

[dullcrisp]

https://libraryofbabel.info/

[Dylan16807]

"Just" have a database, and then what? I can set up a database of all UUIDs very easily, but I don't think it's helpful.

[voussoir]

Relevant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42342382

[Ghoelian]

I don't think that's the case. I have the Earth View extension installed which shows a random google earth image.

I have this set as my homepage in Firefox as moz-extension://<extension-id>/index.html, and this has not changed since installing the extension. The page still works.

[jorvi]

Doing it on restart makes the mitigation de facto useless. How often do you have 10, 20, 30d (or even longer) desktop uptime these days? And no one is regularly restarting their core applications when their desktop is still up.

Enjoy the fingerprinting.

[tristan957]

I restart my browser basically every day.

[cyanydeez]

yeah I close out everything as a mental block against anything I'm working on.

I think there's a subset of people that offload memory to their browsers and that's kinda scary given how these fingerprint things work.

[Thiez]

There isn't enough energy in the solar system to count to 2^128. Now a uuid v4 number "only" has 2^122 bits of entropy. Regardless, you cannot realistically scan the uuid domain. It's not even a matter of Moore's law, it is a limitation of physics that will stand until computers are no longer made of matter.

[recury]

You just need to open so many instances and tabs in each instance that it crashes every couple days

[eek2121]

Umm, I restart my PC about once a week for security and driver updates.

If you don't, you have a lot more to worry about beyond fingerprinting...

Oh and I'm on LINUX (CachyOS) mind you.

[mrweasel]

Why does the browser even allow a website to query for installed extensions? I really don't see what the point of that would be.

The website should never be able to tell what's running in my browser, or on my computer in general. The browser renders the page, maybe runs a little Javascript, but there's no reason why it should be able to query anything about my environment.

I wonder how much stuff would break if the Chrome sandboxing was extended to preventing access to chrome-extension:// from Javascript loaded of random websites.

[b112]

Maybe, but how long are the extension ids? And if they are random, how long to scan a trillion random alphanumeric ids, to find matches?

I presume the extension knows when it wants to access resources of its own. But random javascript, doesn't.

[maples37]

The extension IDs are UUIDs/GUIDs, so 128 bits of entropy. No site is going to be able to successfully scan that full range.

[account42]

UUIDs are 128 bit long but generally have a bit less entropy than that as they are not just a random number. Still more than enough to make enumeration infeasible though.

[Sophira]

And just in case the magnitude of that isn't obvious to people, that means there are 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 total possible UUIDs. Good luck.

[b112]

ChatGPT told me it can be done though.

It won't disclose how, as it says it has had several users report it. And that it expects 50% of the bounty, and will use it for GPU upgrades.

[calvinmorrison]

yes thats how browser fingerprinting works and it is impossible to defeat because there are just too many variations in monitors (relevant for fonts), simple things like user agent, etc.

[ahoka]

And browsers trying to mitigate fingerprinting are miserable to use (fixed window size with only Arial available, etc) and probably fingerprintable anyway.

[OJFord]

Though LinkedIn in Firefox with uBlock Origin allowing just enough (not sure if that's relevant, just haven't run it without) does not last long without rocketing CPU & memory usage, fan spinning up, etc. (ime, anyway)

[Tade0]

In my case LinkedIn consistently crashes Firefox the first time I navigate there on a given day. After I restart FF, all is fine.