FROST: Fingerprinting Remotely using OPFS-based SSD Timing [pdf]

(hannesweissteiner.com)

13 points | by simjnd 3 hours ago ago

4 comments

  • nine_k 2 minutes ago ago

    I still have trouble understanding what information can be leaked this way. Apparently it allows to check whether a particular website was visited recently, but the article is vague in this regard. Can anybody ELI55 this?

  • Dwedit 43 minutes ago ago

    Saw "OPFS" and immediately misread it as OSPF (open-shortest-path-first)

  • Bender 3 hours ago ago

    I see they are testing this on a Mac. I am curious what the test results look like if the users home directory or even the dot directories are tmpfs. On Linux .bash_login can repopulate dot directories from a archive directory think skeleton files and the dot directories can be ephemeral mounted as tmpfs. The person can have a command to commit their ephemeral directories back to the archive if they want to "keep their changes" so to speak. Or automate it on .bash_logout.

        du --max-depth 0 -h -c .cache .config .local
        767M    .cache
        278M    .config
        2.2M    .local
        1.1G    total
    
    It's a bit of space on this CachyOS laptop but it's doable.
  • vivzkestrel an hour ago ago

    a bit off topic but on the topic of fingerprinting here, anyone knows how reddit fingerprinting works at a rough level?