Collected research

Tales of Favicons and Caches: Persistent Tracking in Modern Browsers

Konstantinos Solomos, John Kristoff, Chris Kanich and Jason Polakis · NDSS Symposium

A tracking identifier is stored as a set of entries in the browser's favicon cache, one per subdomain, and read back by redirecting the visitor through those subdomains and observing which favicon requests occur. The cache survives clearing browsing data and incognito mode, so with stable fingerprint attributes a 32-bit identifier is reconstructed in about two seconds.

Record

Researcher

Konstantinos Solomos, John Kristoff, Chris Kanich and Jason Polakis

Published by

NDSS Symposium

Topic

Browser

In the archive

• Collected in the 2021 research round

Related sources

• NDSS 2021 Tales of Favicons and Caches: Persistent Tracking in Modern Browsers
• NDSS 2021 Tales of Favicons and Caches: Persistent Tracking in Modern Browsers

Tags

• side-channel
• cache
• info-leak
• mitigation

This page is the archive's own catalogue record. The research is the work of Konstantinos Solomos, John Kristoff, Chris Kanich and Jason Polakis, first published at the original source. Preserved copies are kept so the citation survives its host; this one was last captured on 19 August 2026.