Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Settings Protection Add-On: A User-Interactive Browser Extension To Prevent The Exploitation Of Preferences, Venkata Naga Siva Seelam

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The abuse of browser preferences is a significant application security issue, despite numerous protections against automated software changing these preferences. Browser hijackers modify user’s desired preferences by injecting malicious software into the browser. Users are not aware of these modifications, and the unwanted changes can annoy the user and circumvent security preferences. Reverting these changes is not easy, and users often have to go through complicated sequences of steps to restore their preferences to the previous values. Tasks to resolve this issue include uninstalling and re-installing the browser, resetting browser preferences, and installing malware removal tools. This thesis describes a …