Google is fixing a privacy issue with Chrome 136 that, for 20 years , allowed websites to determine users' browser history through previously visited links
See also: Chrome 135 and Firefox 137 fix high-severity vulnerabilities
The issue stems from the ability for websites to format links as ':visited', i.e. display them in a different color than the default blue, if the user has previously clicked on them. The system displays this color change regardless of the site the user was on when they clicked the link, allowing other websites to use creative scripts that leak the user's browsing history.
The issue is not limited to theoretical concerns about user privacy , but also introduces a number of real security risks that facilitate tracking, profiling, and phishing fraud .
Researchers have previously demonstrated several classes of attacks related to this privacy gap, including timing, pixel, user interaction, and process-level attacks. The upcoming Google Chrome version, version 136, will finally fix the 20-year-old problem by implementing a three-way key distribution for “visited” links.
See also: Chrome security update fixes multiple critical flaws
Instead of storing link visits globally, Chrome now ranks each visited link using three keys, namely the link URL (the target of the link), the top-level site (the domain of the address bar), and the context origin (the origin of the context where the link appears).
This ensures that a link will only appear as :visited on the same website and in the same source context where the user previously clicked on it, thus preventing leaks between different websites.
To maintain usability, Google added an exception for “self-links,” allowing a website’s visited links to remain marked as visitors to that site, even if the user clicked on them from a different site. A site already knows which pages the user has visited, so this exception doesn’t introduce unwanted history leaks.
Google states that removing the :visited selector completely would mean losing valuable UX cues, so this scenario was excluded from the proposal's goals. Another rejected solution was to use a permissions-based model, as this would be easy to circumvent or even abuse by deceptive websites.
See also: Chrome 134 and Firefox 136 fix critical vulnerabilities
Browser history is a feature of your web browser (such as Chrome, Firefox, Safari, etc.) that records and stores the websites you have visited. It includes the titles of the websites, the URLs , the date and time of the visit, and possibly information about how much time you spent on each page.
Source: bleepingcomputer
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