Stealing Search Engine Queries with JavaScript

["Billy Hoffman" <Billy.Hoffman () spidynamics com>]

SPI Labs has discovered a practical method of using JavaScript to detect the search queries a user has entered into 
arbitrary search engines. All the code needed to steal a user's search queries is written in JavaScript and uses 
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). This code could be embedded into any website either by the website owner or by a 
malicious third party through a Cross-site Scripting (XSS) attack. There it would harvest information about every 
visitor to that site.

 

Possible uses:

-HMO's website could check if a visitor has been searching other sites about cancer, cancer treatments, or drug rehab 
centers.

-Advertising networks could gather information about which topics someone is interested based on their search history 
and use that to echance their customer databases.

-Government websites could see if a visitor has been searching for bomb-making instructions.

 

SPI has published a whitepaper about this technique and has also release proof  of concept code that will steal search 
engine queries. Works solid in Firefox, and IE support is a little shaky on multi word queries.

 

Whitepaper: http://www.spidynamics.com/assets/documents/JS_SearchQueryTheft.pdf

Proof of Concept: http://www.spidynamics.com/spilabs/js-search/index.html

 

Have fun,

Billy Hoffman

--

Lead R&D Engineer

SPI Dynamics - http://www.spidynamics.com <http://www.spidynamics.com/> 

Phone: 678-781-4800

Direct: 678-781-4845

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