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Google Chrome's new "IP Protection" will hide users' IP addresses

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Re: Google Chrome's new "IP Protection" will hide users' IP addresses

#21

Post by DistractionRect »

xg15 wrote: post #13

> Furthermore, if one of Google's proxy servers is compromised, the threat actor can see and manipulate the traffic going through it. Wait what? They are planning to proxy the cleartext , not https?

Nope, per the proposal [0] linked in the article:

> the proxy and network intermediaries are not privy to the contents of the traffic [...] There is an end-to-end encrypted tunnel via TLS, from Chrome to the destination server.

[0] https://github.com/GoogleChrome/ip-protection#core-requireme...

Re: Google Chrome's new "IP Protection" will hide users' IP addresses

#22

Post by moderation »

> "This ensures that neither proxy can see both the client IP address and the destination. CONNECT & CONNECT-UDP support chaining of proxies."

Google are a major contributor to Envoy Proxy and Envoy is used in their stack [0]. CONNECT-UDP support was recently added to Envoy [1, 2, 3]

0. https://twitter.com/gcpweekly/status/1708883000061055151

1. https://github.com/envoyproxy/envoy/pull/27714

2. https://github.com/envoyproxy/envoy/pull/29557

3. https://github.com/envoyproxy/envoy/pull/29651

Re: Google Chrome's new "IP Protection" will hide users' IP addresses

#23

Post by callalex »

For the youngins, in the mid 2000s they branded a very similar service as “Google Web Accelerator” by saying their servers would deal with TCP slow-start for you faster than your home connection. The goal of course was to get you to tunnel all your traffic through their tracking/stalking engine.

Re: Google Chrome's new "IP Protection" will hide users' IP addresses

#24

Post by SlackingOff123 »

> Furthermore, if one of Google's proxy servers is compromised, the threat actor can see and manipulate the traffic going through it. > To mitigate this, Google is considering requiring users of the feature to authenticate with the proxy, preventing proxies from linking web requests to particular accounts, and introducing rate-limiting to prevent DDoS attacks.

Who are the "users of the feature" here? The users of the Chrome browser? How will they authenticate? Using their Google accounts?

Re: Google Chrome's new "IP Protection" will hide users' IP addresses

#25

Post by greatgib »

So so a nice feature (irony), now there will be a single point of control for all your traffic. Point controlled by Google and the US...

Also, it is a proxy, not a VPN, globally meaning that they could see in clear if not all the content of the traffic , at least the destination that is now hidden by TLSv3.

What is interesting is also with something like that they can grow again their ad and saas revenues: now they can easily identify "same users", also you could expect things like websites requiring authentication provided "transparently" by these proxies.

Re: Google Chrome's new "IP Protection" will hide users' IP addresses

#26

Post by doublerabbit »

callalex wrote: post #23

For the youngins, in the mid 2000s they branded a very similar service as “Google Web Accelerator” by saying their servers would deal with TCP slow-start for you faster than your home connection. The goal of course was to get you to tunnel all your traffic through their tracking/stalking engine.

And let's not forget the recent failure of AMP.

Resulted in URLs ending in .amp and sad failure of an application.

Once as an attempt for content control.

Re: Google Chrome's new "IP Protection" will hide users' IP addresses

#28

Post by moritzwarhier »

This is a copy of Apple's iCloud "private relay", right? But why not, here it's gonna be "free" instead of 1€/month, so I guess it's a good QoL improvement in general.

Enabling it for general browsing can cause inconvenience when accessing shops and such.

But for all the rest of the traffic, it seems tempting to obfuscafe your IP by default - provided one believes in the safety of the offering.

I'm not sure if I trust Apple or Google more with my browsing history than say ProtonVPN or something like that. But since I already use their service (Apple's here), using private relay seems to be a sensible default. If they are interested in my browsing history, they have it already.

Re: Google Chrome's new "IP Protection" will hide users' IP addresses

#29

Post by TerrifiedMouse »

doublerabbit wrote: post #26
callalex wrote: post #23

For the youngins, in the mid 2000s they branded a very similar service as “Google Web Accelerator” by saying their servers would deal with TCP slow-start for you faster than your home connection. The goal of course was to get you to tunnel all your traffic through their tracking/stalking engine.

And let's not forget the recent failure of AMP. Resulted in URLs ending in .amp and sad failure of an application. Once as an attempt for content control.

Wait. They killed AMP? I mean I don't miss it but that's something I never thought would end up in the Google graveyard.

Re: Google Chrome's new "IP Protection" will hide users' IP addresses

#30

Post by xg15 »

DistractionRect wrote: post #21
xg15 wrote: post #13

> Furthermore, if one of Google's proxy servers is compromised, the threat actor can see and manipulate the traffic going through it. Wait what? They are planning to proxy the cleartext , not https?

Nope, per the proposal [0] linked in the article: > the proxy and network intermediaries are not privy to the contents of the traffic [...] There is an end-to-end encrypted tunnel via TLS, from Chrome to the destination server. [0] https://github.com/GoogleChrome/ip-protection#core-requireme...

Ok, that makes more sense. Thanks!
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