There is a Firefox extension that blocks port scanning from websites, and the prime example is eBay. If you block eBay with this extension, you cannot log in. eBay specifically requires a port scan of your machine or it won't let you log in. So based on just that alone, I would say that yes, there is a risk.
this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2024
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Privacy
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What in the world are they digging for?
Anything that can help advertisers. In this case they can get data about your wealth and also assume that the nearby devices belong to the same person or family. That's some very useful data for unethical advertisers.
Interesting, I didn't know about that. Bleeping computer has a good write up on it (I'm assuming they broke the story) https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/ebay-port-scans-visitors-computers-for-remote-access-programs/
According to Nullsweep, who first reported on the port scans, they do not occur when browsing the site with Linux.
HA!
Is this related to how Linux does permissions?
Hmm ok thanks for the information. I'll look into that.
You can stop that (and many other things) with jshelter.
Any extensions or mitigations you use can be detected and used to increase the fingerprint of your browser/device even more.
If I visit that page I get a "fingerprinting activity detected" warning from JShelter and then a mostly blank page with "FP ID: Computing..." at the top, and a bunch of javascript errors in the console.
Most sites are fine with the settings where I normally leave them, but it's not much of a surprise for one that's devoted entirely to browser fingerprinting to be broken by JShelter. Stopping or at least making more difficult most fingerprinting attempts is among the things it does. It can't stop all of them of course, but it's one component that helps to work against them.
WebWorker is disabled by default in JShelter which is required for creepjs to work. If you set just that function to Strict instead of just the default Remove, then creepjs still works fine.
But creepjs could be modified to work without webworker if you were thinking JShelter really does something useful to hide your fingerprint from someone who wants it bad enough. And you can still be fingerprinted many other ways even without JavaScript at all.
Yeah my main browser is easily fingerprinted due to the many ways it is non-standard. I'll use torbrowser or something if it actually matters. But JShelter does not really make that problem worse for most people, and it probably frustrates some fraction of attempts — including those that rely on web workers apparently.
The page load time of creepjs would not be acceptable for use in real life. Anything with that much creepy js is going to get itself blocked by other means.
Mullvad browser uBlock jshelter privacybadger NoScript
Whelp adding this to my extension list. There is no webpage I visit that should need this info ... I think thanks for link
This is something new. Thanks for the info. Man we are not safe.
It is webRTC
WebRTC has a separate toggle.
Not in Firefox based browsers. Also that's the tech they use for scanning
media.peerconnection.enabled = false
It has a separate toggle in Chromium so I think these are 2 separate things.
Is it maybe the case that the setting is for allowing/disallowing you to go to sites on your local network?
For example your router controls at "192.168.1.1" (example address) or a raspberry pi with a selfhosted service like nextcloud etc.
You can probably test whether my claim is true by trying to visit your routers page with the setting enabled vs. disabled. (I am not using Chrome)
I don't think websites have access to your local network through the browsers javascript engine, but I may be wrong.
It is possible, yes. Here's a proof of concept implementation and there are undoubtedly others out there.
I guess I'll switch to Chromium then
Except that chromium and everything based on it is Sending information about your pcs Ressource usage on Google sites, as far as I have heard
I don't use that sites on the devices with the highest threat model so it should be fine. Hopefully.
I don't know if it'll work on Chromium or not. It's worth a try.