Quick summary: an automated approach to browser fingerprinting, with two new side-channel attacks on browser engines, that reveals "the underlying operating system, CPU architecture, used privacy-enhancing plugins, as well as exact browser version".
Why it's called a JavaScript Template Attack: "A template is a matrix of properties (rows) for various environments (columns). All properties, e.g., browser properties, are retrieved through JavaScript."
Yep it's actually mentioned somewhere in the paper:
Chari et al. [10] introduced template attacks as a strong
form of side-channel attacks. They first collect side-channel
traces from an attacker-controlled device, the so-called template. Then, they collect a single trace from an identical device
processing an unknown secret. The unknown secret can then
be recovered by comparing the trace to the recorded templates.
Why it's called a JavaScript Template Attack: "A template is a matrix of properties (rows) for various environments (columns). All properties, e.g., browser properties, are retrieved through JavaScript."