{"id":284011,"date":"2024-06-26T15:28:31","date_gmt":"2024-06-26T13:28:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sftarticles.wpenginepowered.com\/es\/?p=334933"},"modified":"2025-07-01T16:17:26","modified_gmt":"2025-07-01T23:17:26","slug":"this-is-how-snailload-works-a-new-spying-method-capable-of-finding-out-which-videos-and-websites-you-watch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/this-is-how-snailload-works-a-new-spying-method-capable-of-finding-out-which-videos-and-websites-you-watch\/","title":{"rendered":"This is how SnailLoad works: a new spying method capable of finding out which videos and websites you watch"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A group of researchers from Graz University of Technology has developed a new method of internet spying called SnailLoad<\/strong>, which can determine with 98% accuracy the video that a user is watching and with 63% accuracy the websites they visit.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Titled “SnailLoad: Exploiting Remote Network Latency Measurements without JavaScript”<\/strong>, the paper<\/a> is the work of Stefan Gast, Roland Czerny, Jonas Juffinger, Fabian Rauscher, Simone Franza, and Daniel Gruss, who explain how this technique does not require the installation of malware<\/strong> or the observation of network traffic through a “person-in-the-middle” attack. Furthermore, the attacker doesn’t even need to be physically close to monitor Wi-Fi packets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SnailLoad takes advantage of the “subtle variations in round-trip times of network packets”, which carry a side-channel signal influenced by the victim’s activity. By having the user download a small file, the attacker can measure latency and changes in internet connection speed to deduce the user’s activity<\/strong>. The name of this new type of attack is due to the slow download speed<\/strong>, compared to that of a snail. “Apart from being slow,” explain the researchers, “SnailLoad, like a snail, leaves traces and is a bit creepy”.<\/p>\n\n\n

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The attack is completely passive and remote<\/strong>, and is capable of accurately determining which video a user is watching or what web activity they are engaged in. To make matters worse, the only way to mitigate it is by degrading the internet connection<\/strong>, something that most users would not be willing to do. Researchers warn that “the root cause cannot be eliminated and further investigation is necessary to find satisfactory solutions”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although this threat is based solely on laboratory research<\/strong> and is unlikely to be exploited in the real world<\/a> at the moment, this new method “demonstrates the wide range of possible attack vectors” that could “significantly stress security personnel,” according to Boris Cipot<\/strong>, a security engineer at the Software Integrity Group of Synopsys<\/strong>, who also warned that “similar attack vectors may already be in use without our knowledge”<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n

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A group of researchers from Graz University of Technology has developed a new method of internet spying called SnailLoad, which can determine with 98% accuracy the video that a user is watching and with 63% accuracy the websites they visit. Titled “SnailLoad: Exploiting Remote Network Latency Measurements without JavaScript”, the paper is the work of … Continue reading “This is how SnailLoad works: a new spying method capable of finding out which videos and websites you watch”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9256,"featured_media":284013,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","wpcf-pageviews":1},"categories":[1015],"tags":[],"usertag":[],"vertical":[],"content-category":[],"class_list":["post-284011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9256"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284011"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284011\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":312558,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284011\/revisions\/312558"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/284013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284011"},{"taxonomy":"usertag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/usertag?post=284011"},{"taxonomy":"vertical","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/vertical?post=284011"},{"taxonomy":"content-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/content-category?post=284011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}