Pixel Perfect: Fingerprinting Canvas in HTML5

By Keaton Mowery and Hovav Shacham.

In Proceedings of W2SP 2012. IEEE Computer Society, May 2012.

Abstract

Tying the browser more closely to operating system functionality and system hardware means that websites have more access to these resources, and that browser behavior varies depending on the behavior of these resources.

We propose a new system fingerprint, inspired by the observation above: render text and WebGL scenes to a <canvas> element, then examine the pixels produced. The new fingerprint is consistent, high-entropy, orthogonal to other fingerprints, transparent to the user, and readily obtainable.

Material

Reference

@InProceedings{MS12, author = {Keaton Mowery and Hovav Shacham}, title = {Pixel Perfect: Fingerprinting Canvas in {HTML5}}, booktitle = {Proceedings of W2SP 2012}, year = 2012, editor = {Matt Fredrikson}, month = may, organization = {IEEE Computer Society} }

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