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arXiv · 2510.14283

Beyond a Single Perspective: Towards a Realistic Evaluation of Website Fingerprinting Attacks

Xinhao Deng·Jingyou Chen·Linxiao Yu·Yixiang Zhang·Zhongyi Gu·Changhao Qiu·Xiyuan Zhao·Ke Xu·Qi Li
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Abstract

Website Fingerprinting (WF) attacks exploit patterns in encrypted traffic to infer the websites visited by users, posing a serious threat to anonymous communication systems. Although recent WF techniques achieve over 90% accuracy in controlled experimental settings, most studies remain confined to single scenarios, overlooking the complexity of real-world environments. This paper presents the first systematic and comprehensive evaluation of existing WF attacks under diverse realistic conditions, including defense mechanisms, traffic drift, multi-tab browsing, early-stage detection, open-world settings, and few-shot scenarios. Experimental results show that many WF techniques with strong performance in isolated settings degrade significantly when facing other conditions. Since real-world environments often combine multiple challenges, current WF attacks are difficult to apply directly in practice. This study highlights the limitations of WF attacks and introduces a multidimensional evaluation framework, offering critical insights for developing more robust and practical WF attacks.

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Xinhao Deng, Jingyou Chen, Linxiao Yu, Yixiang Zhang, Zhongyi Gu, Changhao Qiu, Xiyuan Zhao, Ke Xu, Qi Li. 2025-10-16. Beyond a Single Perspective: Towards a Realistic Evaluation of Website Fingerprinting Attacks. https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.14283

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