JSgraph: Enabling Reconstruction of Web Attacks via Efficient Tracking of Live In-Browser JavaScript Executions

Abstract

In this paper, we propose JSgraph, a forensic engine that is able to efficiently record fine-grained details pertaining to the execution of JavaScript (JS) programs within the browser, with particular focus on JS-driven DOM modifications. JSgraph’s main goal is to enable a detailed, post-mortem reconstruction of ephemeral JS-based web attacks experienced by real network users. In particular, we aim to enable the reconstruction of social engineering attacks that result in the download of malicious executable files or browser extensions, among other attacks. We implement JSgraph by instrumenting Chromium’s code base at the interface between Blink and V8, the rendering and JavaScript engines. We design JSgraph to be lightweight, highly portable, and to require low storage capacity for its fine-grained audit logs. Using a variety of both in-the-wild and lab-reproduced web attacks, we demonstrate how JSgraph can aid the forensic investigation process. We then show that JSgraph introduces acceptable overhead, with a median overhead on popular website page loads between 3.2% and 3.9%.