The infrastructurebrowser fingerprint · fingerprinting

Device fingerprint

The set of attributes a browser or device reveals in ordinary use, combined into an identifier: fonts, screen dimensions, time zone, language, graphics behaviour, extensions. Used by defenders to recognise a returning device, and sold underground as something to wear.

Why it matters to you

A fingerprint is a claim the client makes about itself, so it is evidence and never proof. Treating a matching fingerprint as authentication inverts the control: it is useful for spotting a device that should not be here, and worthless for confirming one that should.

Where we meet it

Fingerprints are sold alongside the credentials taken from the same machine, as a matched set. The buyer is not trying to look like any real user; they are trying to look like the specific one whose session they hold.

Where this term stops being vocabulary

Sherlog is where you watch it happen to you

Knowing the word is the cheap half. The platform is the half where the term arrives attached to your domain, with a timestamp and the source it came from.