Would this have problems with sites like LinkedIn that aggressively ban address blocks from cloud providers?
Show HN: A remote browser product, open-sourced
31–40 of 159 posts
Re: Show HN: A remote browser product, open-sourced
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, BrowserGap is a remote browser isolation product. RBI means accessing the public internet through a browser that runs in the cloud, rather than through a browser that runs on your device. This helps protect you from attacks on the web.
And, if you're interested, read on for more detail. It works by providing a thin client over the web that you connect your regular browser to. The thin client provides an interface to a remote browser that you interact with the browser the public internet. This is significant because the internet is a cesspool of attacks. Malware, ransomware, virii, tracking, exploited PDFs, ways to deliver device zero days over the…
Genuinely curious: who’s your customer base?
I mean, in theory the web is a cesspool of malware, but with reasonably good content blocking (I’m not even in the completely-disable-JS crowd) and conscious avoidance of shady sites, I managed to pretty easily stay clear of all attacks so far, at least over the past decade.
Those way more paranoid than me still have the option of using local VMs/containers without too much compromise. Then the attacker really needs an exceptional exploit chain to escape all the way; it’s hard to imagine any group blowing such a valuable chain on a drive-by.
So, why would anyone sacrifice the ability to interact with text, resolution, color accuracy, frame rate, etc. to reduce the minuscule chance of drive-by attacks (assuming otherwise reasonable opsec)? Extremely high value targets?
But then, why would extremely high value targets trust a MITM? (Self-hosting apparently changes that to some extent.) Also, even if you run your browser in the cloud, that browser could still be hacked and leak sensitive information or actively modify traffic, no? So this isn’t even bulletproof for high value targets.
Re: Show HN: A remote browser product, open-sourced
#33Someone else already mentioned being hit by Google captchas and the developer of this service said that he switched to DDG as the default search provider. Nevertheless I tried Google and kept working through 15 (yes, fifteen) captchas in a row and Google still wouldn't let me through, and then I gave up. What the hell? Surely even after 1 captcha, Google should be amply convinced that I'm not a robot and let me did a single search.
Can anyone explain the purpose of Google putting up an apparently impossible barrier like that? Is it because my searches are comingled with dozens of other people attempting Google searches at the same time from the same IP address? Or Google decided to blacklist his IP address?
Re: Show HN: A remote browser product, open-sourced
#34Get ready to be hired by Mighty XD. Liked your product from your previous submission and liked this one as well. I think it can help some people where censorship is present, but not particularly for me.
Thank you for this!
Re: Show HN: A remote browser product, open-sourced
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would like to test it! It would be great to have an East Asia instance for this.
Cool! I'm just setting it up now. Please hold on a little bit. Edit: Okay an instance in East Asia is up and running! https://hk.cloudbrowser.xyz
Okay, much better now. I’m writing this comment in the Cloud Browser on my iPhone! :-)
It’s now ‘usable’, but definitely not a good environment. Scrolling is unbearable, and once you start scrolling it doesn’t stop, so it’s a pain to navigate.
Re: Show HN: A remote browser product, open-sourced
#36Would this have problems with sites like LinkedIn that aggressively ban address blocks from cloud providers?
Thank you for this.
First up, have you had any issues with site banning or CAPTCHA?
After I saw your question I wanted to know so I just tried signing into my LinkedIn from https://hk.cloudbrowser.xyz and I'll share my experience.
And first they sent a code to my email because "something seemed suspicious":
https://imgur.com/gallery/2lflmjf
When I put in the code from my email I could sign in and it worked as usual.
I have noticed that everytime I land at https://bloomberg.com I get a CAPTCHA (1 only) and then I could read the site.
I opened a support ticket with BB but they said they don't need to do anything right now.
I felt OK with that. 1 CAPTCHA is not too bad.
Re: Show HN: A remote browser product, open-sourced
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cool! I'm just setting it up now. Please hold on a little bit. Edit: Okay an instance in East Asia is up and running! https://hk.cloudbrowser.xyz
Okay, much better now. I’m writing this comment in the Cloud Browser on my iPhone! :-) It’s now ‘usable’, but definitely not a good environment. Scrolling is unbearable, and once you start scrolling it doesn’t stop, so it’s a pain to navigate.
Hahah! That's awesome to hear you're writing it in the Cloud Browser on your iPhone!
But I'm really sorry about the scrolling. Sounds like it's unbearable. I need to fix that!
I added a "fast mode" for scrolling where if you scroll more than 40% of the screen in one go, it accelerates the amount, so you could try scrolling smaller, but I don't feel that's a satisfying solution for you. Scrolling is really important to get right, I'm very sorry about that!
If you want, email me at cris@dosycorp.com and I will work on it and let you know.
Edit: I've had other reports about Safari / iOS being really unusable today. I just tried turning up the image quality for iOS / Safari it should make things better.
Re: Show HN: A remote browser product, open-sourced
#38Someone else already mentioned being hit by Google captchas and the developer of this service said that he switched to DDG as the default search provider. Nevertheless I tried Google and kept working through 15 (yes, fifteen) captchas in a row and Google still wouldn't let me through, and then I gave up. What the hell? Surely even after 1 captcha, Google should be amply convinced that I'm not a robot and let me did a…
Thats really good feedback, thank you for your time on this.
Also, that's terrible! I'm so sorry for you that you had that experience today. You must feel pretty angry to sit through 15 CAPTCHAs!
I have to solve the CAPTCHA problem. I'm sorry I can't explain why this happens or how the CAPTCHA system works. I don't know anything about it.
I'm OKAY with the occasional CAPTCHA, but I'm not satisfied that people are getting hit like this.
I've been told that VPNs have a solution to this (since they need to deal with their clients getting faced with CAPTCHAs as well) but I'm sorry I have not reached out to any VPNs yet about this because, last time this problem occurred[0], after an hour or two I checked and it stopped happening, and there were no more CAPTCHAs. So last time I did not have to change the default search provider to DDG.
I'll send an email to NordVPN now and ask them if they have any idea what I can do.
Re: Show HN: A remote browser product, open-sourced
#39Someone else already mentioned being hit by Google captchas and the developer of this service said that he switched to DDG as the default search provider. Nevertheless I tried Google and kept working through 15 (yes, fifteen) captchas in a row and Google still wouldn't let me through, and then I gave up. What the hell? Surely even after 1 captcha, Google should be amply convinced that I'm not a robot and let me did a…
That is a "feature" of ReCAPTCHA, and I believe there might even be a patent on it. The idea is that if you are sure it's a bot and want to deny them access you still waste their resources by making them solve impossible captchas.
Re: Show HN: A remote browser product, open-sourced
#40I must be missing something but can someone please explain how browsergap > self-host on your own machine (at home, or in a VPS, VPC or the public cloud) is more secure/private then just setting up a VPN on that machine?
As I understand it, it's like an extreme sandbox -- a completely separate computer (or a VM) where all the web stuff happens (javascript etc), which just ships pixels to your computer (phone/laptop etc). Ideally the complexity of the client software is low, i.e. not a web browser, and there is strict site isolation (VMs) at the sandbox side to prevent leakage from one site to another. I'm a little vague as to how thi…
Yes, that's correct, thank you for helping explain things! :)