• 🇨🇦 tunetardis@piefed.caEnglish
    23 minutes

    The attack creates a large OPFS file on the victim’s SSD, with both Chrome and Safari allowing a website to claim up to 60% of total disk space through OPFS, which on a 256GB drive is over 150GB.

    Am I reading this right? 60% of all your disk space can be confiscated by some random web site? I gotta figure out how to get my browser cache onto some tiny partition.

    • Grostleton@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      10 minutes

      I’ve done it with some apps/games by placing the folder in question on a separate drive/partition and using junction points (I use Junction Link Magic, but you can do it manually from command prompt) to basically create a ghost of the folder in the original location that routes everything to the new location.

      You could create a small hidden partition just for the browser cache folder to reside on using this method.

  • Mearcfara@lemmy.mlEnglish
    1 hour

    I wonder if, at any point, anyone stopped to ask themselves, “did I really go to school just so I can ply my knowledge and expertise to find even more ways to fucking track people who expressly don’t want to be tracked so we can use the data for ad revenue (if not for other, even worse things)”?

    • GreenKnight23@lemmy.worldEnglish
      51 minutes

      software dev here.

      I worked with a guy who was implementing application monitoring for clientside applications. think of it like google analytics for single page apps. he proposed we could require users install a browser plugin to make it easier to track and monitor the users on our app with the added benefit we could track them on other websites like our competition.

      one person in a room of about 11 people spoke up about the implications of privacy and the backlash we might have from our user base when they find out that we basically just installed a keylogger in their browser.

      the only thing that stopped this plan from going forward was the risk of losing users and potential revenue loss.

      my point in all this is to answer your question. no, most people have stopped thinking about their actions and are just creating “solutions” to problems that don’t exist.

      • [object Object]@lemmy.caEnglish
        5 minutes

        Hey I’ve been in that room! I don’t get it, I can’t live with that for of thing. And this is why I only have like 2 or 3 extensions (all ad blockers).

        Execs love this shit. I only had one exec who pushed not to do that or open Pandora’s box.

        He made a ton of cash, cashed out, and retired at 30 something. Awesome dude, I miss working under him.

      • Mearcfara@lemmy.mlEnglish
        6 minutes

        It’s wild how quickly morality falls to the wayside (and is subsequently paved over). Especially crazy to abandon one’s moral standing early on the path of solving problems that don’t exist to appease people who don’t care for a chance at the advancement of a career that you can’t take with you in a field that could be wiped out by a solar flare, all to end up making the world a worse place for subsequent generations (I’m not a bleeding-heart idealist, lol).

        I often think about a few people I know who have psych degrees. All were told, in different years, that if they wanted to make money as a psychologist, they needed to get in with tech companies. Some even got job offers.

    • [object Object]@lemmy.caEnglish
      14 minutes

      I studied data mining (now machine learning) and statistics.

      I’ve spent my career explicitly NOT plying my knowledge this way. I don’t know how people do it.

      I’d say my deep knowledge on how to track people has made me pretty averse to a lot of online things.

      You know you can build marketing attribution systems and advertising metrics without violating user privacy.

      But advertisers really like the idea of invading privacy and they pay out the nose for it.

      • Mearcfara@lemmy.mlEnglish
        2 minutes

        Good on you. Few are willing to take the overgrown path. And, funny how people who work with the subject matter often avoid it- the cybersecurity guy who doesn’t own a computer, the guy who services food processing equipment who refuses to buy premade food, the guy who works/ed for the DoD who doesn’t own a phone, etc.

        Would you mind sharing some of the online things you’re averse to, besides all that is implied by being on the Fediverse? I’m still new to this stuff.

  • UnpopularCrow@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2 hours

    “Google says fingerprinting is not a security vulnerability”. That is a very google thing to say.

  • ushmel@piefed.worldEnglish
    3 hours

    They really gave internet browsers too much access. Why the fuck does my browser need this level of clearance

    • Canaconda@lemmy.caEnglish
      2 hours

      They better hope there isn’t another pandemic. Cuz I am officially labeling that quantity of free time as “1 Degoogle”. and if I ever get my hands on another fuckin degoogle I am going to degoogle all over my fucking house

      • HarneyToker@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2 hours

        You can Degoogle one step at a time. Make it a weekly habit to spend 10 minutes Degoogling every week and you won’t need to wait for another worldwide shutdown

    • fonix232@fedia.io
      2 hours

      Becau of the push for web apps to get around platform (and platform store) limitations.

      e.g. Apple banned apps for vapes (not just talking about nic vapes but e.g. there’s a number of cannabis flower vapourisers that use Bluetooth for fine tuned settings, those were forced to move over to web apps as the native apps simply got pulled), but also software like ESPHome is completely web based and needs access to raw USB devices to write the new firmware onto them, the list goes on.

      Main issue seems to be that a lot of these APIs don’t require explicit user approval. USB, Bluetooth does, but apparently accessing detailed system statistics doesn’t? Make that make sense…

    • AeronMelon@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2 hours

      If you don’t allow ReCaptcha access to your address book, the website will fail to load.

  • Peffse@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1 hour

    So the file has to exceed available RAM to benchmark the SSD performance? How viable is that at all? You’d be downloading gigabytes.

      • Peffse@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1 hour

        Ah that makes more sense. Seems like something easy to detect at least.

        It’s been a while but doesn’t Windows let you know when you exceed RAM usage and hit paging file?

        • Jesus_666@lemmy.worldEnglish
          9 minutes

          You didn’t hit the page file. This is OPFS, an in-browser filesystem that is sandboxed to each origin (essentially to each website), not directly accessible by the user, and exempt from the security checks that would guard access to the regular filesystem.

          Yeah, that sounds to me like it needs a major revision.

  • Mwa@thelemmy.clubEnglish
    2 hours

    Good i dont allow every Javascript on websites (usually)