Demystifying privacy in Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox
We evaluated private browsing modes in Chrome and Mozilla, analyzed and measured the effectiveness of the claims made by Google and Firefox. Our main motive is to secure the local user from local attacker such that user’s private browsing experience does not leave any trace on the browser. so that when the browser is opened in public mode by anyone, our local user feels safe. We also propose the notion of ideal private browsing from a browsing experience perspective. We tested the browser from a local user point of view and found the leaks present during and after the browser was exited. Our results suggest that the bookmarks, extensions or plugins and DNS cache leaks present a major threat to the security of the local user from a local attacker. We also studied and analyzed the disk usage and DNS cache leak by both browsers and found the conflict between privacy and performance. We also found that Firefox bookmarking policy has a serious leak which reveals the bookmarks of unvisited URLs that were added in private mode and distinguishes them from those that were added in public mode. We also propose two solutions to make bookmarking and plugins/extension more secure so that they do not leave any explicit trail when private browsing is exited.
In Mozilla Firefox, the Bookmarks from Private Browsing mode are displayed using a different icon (dashed square). They are visible even in the Public Browsing mode. The same site, if visited in the Public browsing mode, will show up differently.
