Supercookies
Explore the concept of supercookies, which are cookies set on top-level domains and blocked by browsers due to privacy and security concerns. Understand how supercookies differ from traditional cookies and other tracking methods like ETag tracking, examine real-world examples of unwanted user tracking by ISPs, and prepare to learn crucial cookie security flags that protect user information.
We'll cover the following...
We'll cover the following...
Introduction
What if we were able to set a cookie on a top-level domain (TLD) such as .com or .org? That would be a huge security concern, for two reasons:
- user privacy: every website running on that specific TLD would be able to track information about the user in shared storage
- information leakage: a server could mistakenly store a sensitive piece of data in a cookie available to other sites
In the following code, by appending ?super=on to the URL, the server is going to set a cookie on the domain local (e.g., wasec.local). Since it is a ...