Collected research

CSS :visited may be a bit overrated

Browser vendors crippled CSS :visited to stop history theft, and cache timing was treated as a weaker substitute because earlier attacks were destructive, probabilistic and slow. This proof of concept performs reliable, high-performance, non-destructive cache inspection, arguing the gap between :visited and the less interesting techniques is small.

Record

Published by

lcamtuf.blogspot.com

Topic

Other

In the archive

• Collected in the 2012 research round

Tags

• side-channel
• timing-attack
• cache
• css
• info-leak

This page is the archive's own catalogue record. The research is the work of lcamtuf.blogspot.com, first published at the original source. Preserved copies are kept so the citation survives its host; this one was last captured on 10 August 2026.