New Cache Side Channel Attack Can De-Anonymize Targeted Online Users

A group of academics from the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) has warned of a novel technique that could be used to defeat anonymity protections and identify a unique website visitor.

“An attacker who has complete or partial control over a website can learn whether a specific target (i.e., a unique individual) is browsing the website,” the researchers said. “The attacker knows this target only through a public identifier, such as an email address or a Twitter handle.”

The cache-based targeted de-anonymization attack is a cross-site leak that involves the adversary leveraging a service such as Google Drive, Dropbox, or YouTube to privately share a resource (e.g., image, video, or a YouTube playlist) with the target, followed by embedding the shared resource into the attack website.

This can be achieved by, say, privately sharing the resource with the target using the victim’s email address or the appropriate username associated with the service and then inserting the leaky resource using an