COMMON ATTACK PATTERN ENUMERATION AND CLASSIFICATIONLive MITRE record

CAPEC-464

Evercookie

An attacker creates a very persistent cookie that stays present even after the user thinks it has been removed. The cookie is stored on the victim's machine in over ten places. When the victim clears the cookie cache via traditional means inside the browser, that operation removes the cookie from certain places but not others. The malicious code then replicates the cookie from all of the places where it was not deleted to all of the possible storage locations once again. So the victim again has the cookie in all of the original storage locations. In other words, failure to delete the cookie in even one location will result in the cookie's resurrection everywhere. The evercookie will also persist across different browsers because certain stores (e.g., Local Shared Objects) are shared between different browsers.

Abstraction

Standard

Typical severity

Medium

Likelihood of attack

Medium

Understand the attack

What is this attack pattern?

An attacker creates a very persistent cookie that stays present even after the user thinks it has been removed. The cookie is stored on the victim's machine in over ten places. When the victim clears the cookie cache via traditional means inside the browser, that operation removes the cookie from certain places but not others. The malicious code then replicates the cookie from all of the places where it was not deleted to all of the possible storage locations once again. So the victim again has the cookie in all of the original storage locations. In other words, failure to delete the cookie in even one location will result in the cookie's resurrection everywhere. The evercookie will also persist across different browsers because certain stores (e.g., Local Shared Objects) are shared between different browsers.

Extended description

The places a persistent cookie is stored on a victim's machine include: Standard HTTP Cookies, Local Shared Objects (Flash Cookies), Silverlight Isolated Storage, Storing cookies in RGB values of auto-generated, force-cached, PNGs using HTML5 Canvas tag to read pixels (cookies) back out, Storing cookies in Web History, Storing cookies in HTTP ETags, Storing cookies in Web cache, window.name caching, Internet Explorer userData storage, HTML5 Session Storage, HTML5 Local Storage, HTML5 Global Storage, HTML5 Database Storage via SQLite, among others.

Requirements

What does the attack require?

Prerequisites

  • The victim's browser is not configured to reject all cookiesThe victim visits a website that serves the attackers' evercookie

Skills required

Not stated in the MITRE record.

Resources required

  • Evercookie source code

Defence

How is it prevented and mitigated?

1
Design: Browser's design needs to be changed to limit where cookies can be stored on the client side and provide an option to clear these cookies in all places, as well as another option to stop these cookies from being written in the first place.
2
Design: Safari browser's private browsing mode is currently effective against evercookies.