BrFAST: a Tool to Select Browser Fingerprinting Attributes for Web Authentication According to a Usability-Security Trade-off

TL;DR

BrFAST is a platform that helps website managers select optimal browser fingerprinting attributes by balancing security and usability, using a novel algorithm and visualization tools.

Contribution

We introduce BrFAST, a comprehensive tool with FPSelect algorithm for attribute selection in browser fingerprinting, considering security-usability trade-offs.

Findings

FPSelect effectively balances security and usability.

BrFAST enables comparison of attribute sets and selection methods.

Demonstration shows improved attribute selection process.

Abstract

In this demonstration, we put ourselves in the place of a website manager who seeks to use browser fingerprinting for web authentication. The first step is to choose the attributes to implement among the hundreds that are available. To do so, we developed BrFAST, an attribute selection platform that includes FPSelect, an algorithm that rigorously selects the attributes according to a trade-off between security and usability. BrFAST is configured with a set of parameters for which we provide values for BrFAST to be usable as is. We notably include the resources to use two publicly available browser fingerprint datasets. BrFAST can be extended to use other parameters: other attribute selection methods, other measures of security and usability, or other fingerprint datasets. BrFAST helps visualize the exploration of the possibilities during the search of the best attributes to use, compare the properties of attribute sets, and compare several attribute selection methods. During the demonstration, we compare the attributes selected by FPSelect with these selected by the usual methods according to the properties of the resulting browser fingerprints (e.g., their usability, their unicity).