Drudge Retort: The Other Side of the News
Monday, June 01, 2026

There's reportedly a new way for websites to spy on visitors: by monitoring how their computers' SSDs behave. The technique is called FROST, short for "fingerprinting remotely using OPFSbased SSD timing," and it runs through JavaScript on a web page. So far, this looks more practical in lab conditions than in the real world.

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In 2000, we had protests (*in-person*!) about DoubleClick's use of cookies for advertising, and the potential to track people across as many as 1500 websites. They dodged the objections, Google bought DoubleClick, and every harm that was feared came to pass. archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes ...

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-- Anil Dash (@anildash.com) 1:57 PM · May 17, 2026

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More from the article ...

... A malicious website can create a large file in the browser's private storage. It can then repeatedly read from this file to check for small changes in the time it takes to access it. These timing changes occur because other programs and browser tabs are also using the SSD, creating competition for drive access, per Ars Technica.

By tracking these timing patterns and feeding them into a trained convolutional neural network, the attacker can determine which other websites and apps are open on the device. This works in different web browsers and can recognize common applications based on their input and output patterns. FROST does not read actual files or decrypt HTTPS traffic, but it can reveal what services run in the background. ...


#1 | Posted by LampLighter at 2026-05-31 12:09 AM | Reply

imo, browser JavaScript is evil.

#2 | Posted by LampLighter at 2026-05-31 12:11 AM | Reply

extremetech.com
article bout hacking
yeah not clickin that ----

clean link:
web.archive.org

Archive
Everything

#3 | Posted by john_savage2 at 2026-06-01 04:33 PM | Reply

OP: No habla archive
OP: OMG bad java! Ow ow ow!

#4 | Posted by john_savage2 at 2026-06-01 04:35 PM | Reply

This is so disappointing... I was expecting a song and an ongoing conversation with OP and himself when I saw who posted this.

#5 | Posted by lfthndthrds at 2026-06-01 05:55 PM | Reply

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