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In 2005, Safari first introduced private browsing, a feature that enables a user to surf the Internet without leaving traces on her local computer, such as history, cookies and temporary files (Aggarwal et al., 2010). Since then, all other mainstream browsers have added the same feature, including Internet Explorer (IE)(Internet Explorer private browsing mode), Chrome (Chrome private browsing mode) and Firefox (Mozilla Firefox private browsing mode).

Although the basic aim of private browsing is the same, the implementations vary greatly across different browsers. This adds significant complexity to the subject. In USENIX Security'10, Aggarwal, Burzstein, Jackson and Boneh first initiated the study of the security of private browsing in modern browsers and discovered several vulnerabilities (Aggarwal et al., 2010). In particular, they studied the dire impact of browser extensions on private browsing in Firefox (v3. 6). A …