Skip to main content
Springer Nature Link
Log in

On Estimating Platforms of Web User with JavaScript Math Object

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Advances in Network-Based Information Systems (NBiS 2018)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes on Data Engineering and Communications Technologies ((LNDECT,volume 22))

Included in the following conference series:

  • 1035 Accesses

Abstract

Browser fingerprinting is a technique to identify a device using a combination of information that a server can gather from a browser. In general, the user-agent is known to be one of the most useful features for identification via browser fingerprinting. However, users can easily change the user-agent. This may lead to a decrease in the device identification accuracy. In this paper, we conducted two experiments. First, we proposed a method to estimate the platforms without using the user-agent. In particular, we used the fact that the computational result of a JavaScript math object varies depending on the platform. Using this method, we could classify 14 platforms into nine groups. Five of these uniquely identify the OS and the browser, two uniquely identify the OS and one uniquely identifies the browser. Second, we compared the accuracy of the browser fingerprint with user-agent (FP-A) and the browser fingerprint with our proposed method (FP-B). As a result, the identification accuracy rate with FP-B was only 0.4% lower than that with FP-A.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
$34.99 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or eBook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Eckersley, P.: How unique is your web browser? In: Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETS 2010) (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  2. Mowery, K., Shacham, H.: Pixel perfect: fingerprinting Canvas in HTML5. In: Proceedings of Web 2.0 Security and Privacy (W2SP) (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  3. Englehardt, S., Narayanan, A.: Online tracking: a 1-million-site measurement and analysis. In: Proceedings of ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS 2016) (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  4. Alexa top sites, 18 June 2018. https://www.alexa.com/topsites/

  5. Draft ECMA-262, 18 June 2018. https://tc39.github.io/ecma262/#sec-math-object

  6. Tor issue ticket, 18 June 2018. https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/6119

  7. Tanabe, K., Takahashi, K., Yasuda, K., Taneoka, M., Hosoya, R., Koshiba, R., Saito, Y., Saito, T.: Study on combination of features in browser fingerprinting. In: Computer Security Symposium 2017 Proceedings CD-ROM, pp. 1090–1097 (2017)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Lancers, 18 June 2018. https://www.lancers.jp

  9. Math - JavaScript - MDN -Mozilla, 18 June 2018. https://developer.mozilla.org/ja/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Math

Download references

Acknowledgment

This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number 18K11305.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Meiji University, Higashimita 1-1-1, Kawasaki, Japan

    Takamichi Saito, Takafumi Noda, Ryohei Hosoya, Kazuhisa Tanabe & Yuta Saito

Authors
  1. Takamichi Saito
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Takafumi Noda
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Ryohei Hosoya
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Kazuhisa Tanabe
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Yuta Saito
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Takamichi Saito .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Information and Communication Engineering, Faculty of Information Engineering, Fukuoka Institute of Technology, Fukuoka, Japan

    Leonard Barolli

  2. Faculty of Management, Comenius University in Bratislava, Bratislava, Slovakia

    Natalia Kryvinska

  3. Faculty of Business Administration, Rissho University, Tokyo, Japan

    Tomoya Enokido

  4. Department of Advanced Sciences, Hosei University, Tokyo, Japan

    Makoto Takizawa

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this paper

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this paper

Saito, T., Noda, T., Hosoya, R., Tanabe, K., Saito, Y. (2019). On Estimating Platforms of Web User with JavaScript Math Object. In: Barolli, L., Kryvinska, N., Enokido, T., Takizawa, M. (eds) Advances in Network-Based Information Systems. NBiS 2018. Lecture Notes on Data Engineering and Communications Technologies, vol 22. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98530-5_34

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics