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DEMACRO: Defense against Malicious Cross-Domain Requests

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Research in Attacks, Intrusions, and Defenses (RAID 2012)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNSC,volume 7462))

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Abstract

In the constant evolution of theWeb, the simple always gives way to the more complex. Static webpages with click-through dialogues are becoming more and more obsolete and in their place, asynchronous JavaScript requests, Web mash-ups and proprietary plug-ins with the ability to conduct cross-domain requests shape the modern user experience. Three recent studies showed that a significant number ofWeb applications implement poor cross-domain policies allowing malicious domains to embed Flash and Silverlight applets which can conduct arbitrary requests to these Web applications under the identity of the visiting user. In this paper, we confirm the findings of the aforementioned studies and we design DEMACRO, a client-side defense mechanism which detects potentially malicious cross-domain requests and de-authenticates them by removing existing session credentials. Our system requires no training or user interaction and imposes minimal performance overhead on the user’s browser.

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Lekies, S., Nikiforakis, N., Tighzert, W., Piessens, F., Johns, M. (2012). DEMACRO: Defense against Malicious Cross-Domain Requests. In: Balzarotti, D., Stolfo, S.J., Cova, M. (eds) Research in Attacks, Intrusions, and Defenses. RAID 2012. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 7462. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-33338-5_13

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-33338-5_13

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-33337-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-33338-5

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