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'Private' Browsing Sessions Not So Private

by Terrence O'Brien on July 28, 2010 at 09:10 AM

Private Browsing
It turns out that the so-called private browsing modes included in modern Web browsers might not be so private after all. Collin Jackson at Carnegie Mellon University has discovered a weakness in how some sites store data on PCs, and claims that it could allow digital snoops to discover what websites a person has been visiting -- even with a private mode enabled.

A banking site, for instance, encrypts data and uses a security key, which decrypts the data being passed between a given PC and the site. This feature, designed to protect your information from prying eyes, requires that the key be stored locally on the computer. But often, these keys are left behind when cookies and browsing history are deleted. Jackson told New Scientist that uncovering these clues to browsing history "[does] not require a great deal of technical sophistication." Though a hacker could discern what sites you've visited, there's little else that could be gleaned from the scraps of data left behind. So, info hungry snoops would likely turn to a less secure PC. Still, when your average surfer turns on the private mode in a browser, they expect their tracks to be erased, and erased they're not. [From: New Scientist]

Tags: CollinJackson, crime, hacking, privacy, PrivacyMode, PrivateBrowsing, security, top, web

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