Keystroke anonymization firefox addon

Go to file

Kevin F 922a0bdbd1 Cleanup and lower timing delay		2022-02-20 18:17:10 -06:00
icons	Added whitelist button	2021-08-10 19:40:14 +00:00
settings	Cleanup and lower timing delay	2022-02-20 18:17:10 -06:00
background.js	Cleanup and lower timing delay	2022-02-20 18:17:10 -06:00
LICENSE.txt	initial commit	2021-08-08 19:49:22 +00:00
manifest.json	Finished popup approach	2022-02-20 00:50:15 -06:00
README.md	Update readme to reflect whitelist ability	2022-02-20 00:53:05 -06:00

README.md

Private Keyboard - anti-biometrics Firefox addon 🦊 ⌨️ 🔒

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/private-keyboard/

Did you know that websites can identify you based on the way you type?

There are spy libraries that can determine how long keys are held down and the time between keys. This is apparently good enough for spying that it can be used as a form of biometric authentication, by companies like Keytrac and TypingDNA. According to TypingDNA, their software has been used for test proctoring, and in banking apps.

This addon was created to skew the key press timing by limiting the speed of presses. The speed is changed randomly on each page load, with a min of 150ms and a max of 300ms.

It uses a less than ideal thread locking solution, as simply buffering text does not stop event listeners from spies. Now it also has a non-default setting to use prompt() on non-password single line input elements. This reduces CPU usage and increase typing speed while offering better protection than the delay approach.

You can whitelist domains that you trust on the addon settings page, but it was decided not to support changing the key speed manually as that would add another fingerprinting avenue.

Development Roadmap:

~~Menu button to add whitelisted domain more quickly~~
Buffered window/menu/popup option to type quickly but prevent page surveillance
More throrough testing against different avenues of keyboard surveillance
Stylometry protection

Caveats

This addon may not defeat all types of keyboard biometric surveillance, however it was tested against the Keytrac and TypingDNA demos and it worked well.
This addon does not yet deal with stylometry
Some websites override all key events in which case it is not (yet) possible to protect against keyboarding analysis there
You may see higher CPU usage while typing. This is due do the unideal locking solution described above
Do not confuse this with spying keyboard apps on mobile devices, this cannot address that.
Not tested on Firefox Android

Sources:

www dot keytrac dot net/en/

www dot typingdna dot com/

https://www.whonix.org/wiki/Stylometry https://www.whonix.org/wiki/Keystroke_Deanonymization