wss://proxyjs.brdtnet.com:443
This hostname resolves to AWS Global Accelerator IPs
There is some irony that both the scrapers and the websites being scraped are probably hosted on AWS, while playing an elaborate cat-and-mouse game pretending that they weren't.
Thankfully, the blast radius of this is nothing without connectivity.
> On iOS, this bypasses any configured VPN’s tun0 interface entirely. The peer tunnel does not cross a user-configured VPN, even when the rest of the app’s HTTPS traffic does.
What's a legitimate use case for this API? When/why should an app be allowed to bypass a user-configured VPN?
When you're the application providing the VPN or when you're any app built to communicate with something on a local-ish network, not something actually reachable globally.
temporarily if full tunnelling isn't working, one can split tunnel to route around issues due to VPN
But imo an app should never bypass something like a network boundary.
I'd love to find and remove any apps from my devices that have this SDk active.
https://www.thequantizer.com/tutorials/wireshark-iphone-traf...
It has been a while since I personally did such traces, but Wireshark was very simple to use and once the network is exposed, it has lots of information available online if you need more.
I found bypassing your VPN particularly appalling, as is the whole thing. Personally, it would be amazing if there were a limit on how much can be in Terms of Service, as no one wants to read that much anymore.
> you are allowing Bright Data to occasionally use your device’s free resources and _IP address to download public web data from the internet_. (emphasis mine)
I think the misleading part -- to the end-user -- is the "download public web data" part. If the data is public why can't Bright Data download it themselves? Well, because the other end doesn't want them to, apparently. The product is make you help Bright Data circumvent the undesired properties of the "public" data providers, on behalf of someone who happens to have the cash but as of yet is at the short end of the Internet stick (for all the right reasons, I'd say).
This is absolutely deplorable, but knowing the directions this is heading, I am neither surprised nor concerned, frankly. People have long voted with their wallet -- it's not the privacy-conscious Joe the Hacker that is being proxied through here, it's our parents and millions of people who just want entertainment at the end of the working day, including _parents_ of small children.
Day by day the dark Internet theory sounds more plausible, and frankly I am all there for it. The Internet will collapse into a feudal internetwork where any routing will need hop-by-hop key, so real people (and agents, frankly) can maintain a measure of trust that right now is being actively circumvented.
Imaging having the police show up at your door because they've figured out that you're trafficking child porn, when the actual culprit is someone that is using your TV as a proxy to trade child porn.
If there is any good news about this, it is that the fatigue seems to be hitting normal people. Buddy from work complained to me how he now is now forced to be a full blown wifi/internet admin so that his kids' restrictions/limits are appropriately enforced.
I am just venting, because I am not entirely certain what an appropriate solution here is.
If the divide was data center vs residential IPs, fine, but thanks to Bright Data and friends, residential IPs are getting suspicious as well, so I guess the next step is full-on client verification then...
Which presumably passes it a URL to scrape and waits for it to return the data.
What happens if I write my own tool that connects to that C&C server, waits for a URL to scrape, and returns gigabytes of freshly brewed hot horseshit?