![]() The WEI proposal says, "due to the fully masked tokens, this technology assumes that the attester can produce sustainable, high-quality attestation without any feedback from websites about gaps such as false positives or false negatives."Īpple's Private Access Tokens do not involve the exchange of device data between the device maker (Apple, as an attester) and Cloudflare. Google considers Apple Private Access Tokens to be too private. Blocking competition, hamstringing open source and the open web, and removing all user control over their own devices is not a reasonable tradeoff." That said, this has to be carefully balanced against the health of the web itself. Removing all user control over their own devices is not a reasonable tradeoff "Fraud and bots on the web are a real problem, and discussion on ways to defend against that is totally reasonable, and often very valuable!" Perry declared. Nonetheless, he opposes attestation for being fundamentally anti-competitive. Perry argues that Apple's scheme is less of a concern because Safari's market share (~20 percent of mobile and desktop browsers) is far less than Chrome/Chromium (~70 percent of web clients). Network security firm Cloudflare uses Private Access Tokens as a way to avoid showing people CAPTCHA puzzles to prove that they're not robots. Tim Perry, creator of dev tool HTTP Toolkit, noted in a blog post on Tuesday that Apple offers Private Access Tokens for its Safari browser. How dodgy browser plugins, web scripts can silently rewrite that URL you were about to hit – and throw you into an internet wormholeīut attestation has even made it to the web.Xiaomi emits phone browser updates after almighty row over web activity harvested even in incognito mode.Google asks websites to kindly not break its shiny new targeted-advertising API.Google's next big idea for browser security looks like another freedom grab to some.While this seems like a noble motivation, and the use cases listed seem very reasonable, the solution proposed is absolutely terrible and has already been equated with DRM for websites, with all that it implies."ĭangerous though the idea may be, attestation has already been implemented on native platforms ( Android and iOS) – some would say autocratic regimes compared to the relatively open web. "The details are nebulous, but the goal seems to be to prevent 'fake' interactions with websites of all kinds. It would provide websites with an API telling them whether the browser and the platform it is running on that is currently in use is trusted by an authoritative third party (called an attester)," wrote Julien Picalausa, a software developer at browser maker Vivaldi, in a post on Tuesday. "The idea of it is as simple as it is dangerous. ![]() The use cases listed seem very reasonable, the solution proposed is absolutely terrible Those in the technical community who have expressed alarm about the proposal argue that the web should not be brought under a permission-based regime, where a third party renders judgment on the worthiness of users – without consultation, based on opaque criteria. ![]() However, the intended use of a technology isn't necessarily a limitation on it being employed in tricky new ways. ![]() But Wisner insists, "WEI is not designed to single out browsers or extensions" and is not designed to block browsers that spoof their identity. Nor is it evident from the WEI code that has been added to the Chromium open source project. What WEI's attestation check actually looks for has not been revealed. It provides a way for a web publisher to add code to a website or app that checks with a trusted third party, like Google, to see whether a visitor's software and hardware stack meets certain criteria to be deemed authentic. "Fraud detection and mitigation techniques often rely heavily on analyzing unique client behavior over time for anomalies, which involves large collection of client data from both human users and suspected automated clients." The WEI experiment is part of a larger goal to keep the web safe and open "The WEI experiment is part of a larger goal to keep the web safe and open while discouraging cross-site tracking and lessening the reliance on fingerprinting for combating fraud and abuse," he explained in a GitHub Issues post. Google's Web Environment Integrity (WEI) proposal, according to one of the developers working on the controversial fraud fighting project, aims to make the web "more private and safe."īen Wiser, a software engineer at the Chocolate Factory, responded on Wednesday to serious concerns about the proposal by insisting that WEI aims to address online fraud and abuse without the privacy harms enabled by browser fingerprinting and cross-site tracking. ![]()
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