There’s something many computer users might not have known about their precious devices. You see, the computer you’re using right now to read this article is unique in its own way. It’s like you where a fingerprint can set you apart from everyone else on this planet.
You might be wondering what the heck am I talking about, and that’s fine. Let me explain; it’s called ‘Fingerprinting‘. Your computer has its own fingerprint, and if you want to, it’s possible to get the fingerprint right away via a particular website. It is also called Browser Fingerprinting or Device Fingerprinting. It’s easy and only takes a short while before everything is done, so just wait a while.
Cross-browser fingerprinting
To begin, you need to visit the Unique Machine website and scroll down to the option that says Get My Fingerprint. Once the process begins, the website will proceed to collect information from your web browser, fonts, computer’s GPU, and other things not explained.
Interestingly enough, the developers are not shying away from providing the source code to whomever that might need it. The source code is available via the company’s GitHub page right now, so take a visit and swipe it for yourself.
The company wrote a research paper on cross-browser fingerprinting where it explains that a user can perform a test on the same computer with a different web browser and still come away with a unique print.
“In the paper, we propose a (cross-) browser fingerprinting based on many novel OS and hardware level features, e.g., these from graphics card, CPU, audio stack, and installed writing scripts. Specifically, because many of such OS and hardware level functions are exposed to JavaScript via browser APIs, we can extract features when asking the browser to perform certain tasks through these APIs. The extracted features can be used for both single- and cross-browser fingerprinting.”
What’s rather interesting is the conclusion that Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer, while having different fingerprints, are quite similar. This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise seeing as Edge and Internet Explorer are both Microsoft made. Not only that, but both web browsers share similar code. Several instances in Edge are not so different from Internet Explorer, which should be proof enough.
Overall, we like what is being done here because it proves that attackers can gain information from a browser and possibly tell who it belongs to. If you would like to take the test, go here.
Seeing as it uses JavaScript to get the job done, we recommend users to install NoScript or a similar browser add-on to block any illegal fingerprinting of your web browser and computer.