Windows, Linux, Android File Notification Systems Leak User Activity

Researchers at Graz University of Technology in Austria show that the file-change notification features built into Linux, Android, Windows, and macOS can be abused to monitor other users on the same system, from the rhythm of their typing to the websites they visit.

Linux, Windows, macOS, and Android let applications ask to be alerted when files are created, modified, or deleted. Text editors, file managers, sync clients, and antivirus products are among the programs that use this capability. It requires no elevated privileges, only read access to the location being watched.

The attacks never expose file contents, but the researchers demonstrated that file names and the timing of events are enough to reconstruct user, application, and system activity. Most of the attacks require an adversary who can already run code on the machine under a separate account. On Android, it would be an app that requests no permissions.

On Linux,...

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