Exploiting split browsers for efficiently protecting user data

Angeliki Zavou, Elias Athanasopoulos, Georgios Portokalidis, Angelos D. Keromytis

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

3 Scopus citations

Abstract

Offloading complex tasks to a resource-abundant environ- ment like the cloud, can extend the capabilities of resource constrained mobile devices, extend battery life, and improve user experience. Split browsing is a new paradigm that adopts this strategy to improve web browsing on devices like smartphones and tablets. Split browsers offload computa- tion to the cloud by design; they are composed by two parts, one running on the thin client and one in the cloud. Render- ing takes place primarily in the latter, while a bitmap or a simplified web page is communicated to the client. Despite its difference with traditional web browsing, split browsing still suffers from the same types of threats, such as cross-site scripting. In this paper, we propose exploiting the design of split browsers to also utilize cloud resources for protecting against various threats efficiently. We begin by systemati- cally studying split browsing architectures, and then proceed to propose two solutions, in parallel and inline cloning, that exploit the inherent features of this new browsing paradigm to accurately and efficiently protect user data against com- mon web exploits. Our preliminary results suggest that our framework can be efficiently applied to Amazon's Silk, the most widely deployed at the time of writing, split browser.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationCCSW'12 - Proceedings of the Cloud Computing Security Workshop
Pages37-42
Number of pages6
DOIs
StatePublished - 2012
Event2012 ACM Workshop on Cloud Computing Security Workshop, CCSW 2012 - Raleigh, NC, United States
Duration: 19 Oct 201219 Oct 2012

Publication series

NameProceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security
ISSN (Print)1543-7221

Conference

Conference2012 ACM Workshop on Cloud Computing Security Workshop, CCSW 2012
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityRaleigh, NC
Period19/10/1219/10/12

Keywords

  • Cloud
  • Cross-site scripting
  • Data protection
  • Information flow tracking
  • Split browser architectures

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