News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:WebRTC: the future of web games by k__ on Tuesday December 27, 2016 @02:53PM (#13265711)
To the security people here.

I like the idea of P2P and UDP for better latency.

But how dangerous is this?

Re:WebRTC: the future of web games by jaypaulynice on Tuesday December 27, 2016 @03:08PM (#13265807)
I think WebRTC is secure by default and everything is supposed to be encrypted and served over https...Chrome for example doesn't allow unsecure usage of the API's. See this for more: http://webrtc-security.github.io
Re:WebRTC: the future of web games by pmontra on Tuesday December 27, 2016 @05:50PM (#13266929)
I'm still blocking it with https://github.com/ChrisAntaki/disable-webrtc-firefox because it leaks the local IP addresses of the client over VPNs. Yes, addresses because there can be many of them at the same time, so it's useful for fingerprinting.

Check your ones at https://www.privacytools.io/webrtc.html

I really don't know why the local IP addresses must be known to the server, maybe there are good technical reasons, but it's not OK.

Re:WebRTC: the future of web games by tokenizerrr on Tuesday December 27, 2016 @06:23PM (#13267170)
> I really don't know why the local IP addresses must be known to the server, maybe there are good technical reasons, but it's not OK.

So they can pair you with other clients sharing a local network with you? This allows the client to talk peer to peer over their LAN which is extremely valuable.

Re:WebRTC: the future of web games by pmontra on Wednesday December 28, 2016 @02:44AM (#13269074)
The public address could be enough for the server to realize there are two browsers from the same LAN. Then it tells the browsers to look for each other.

I'm not really sure that it is practical with large LANs (a /16) but it doesn't look impossible. If they design for privacy they could develop an algorithm that works.

And if I connect with a VPN I probably don't want to bypass it. I've got customers that accept unconveniences to protect their network with VPNs. Should browsers break it with WebRTC? I didn't think so. It's a vulnerability that I keep blocked.

Re:WebRTC: the future of web games by tokenizerrr on Wednesday December 28, 2016 @10:27AM (#13271063)
> The public address could be enough for the server to realize there are two browsers from the same LAN. Then it tells the browsers to look for each other.

> I'm not really sure that it is practical with large LANs (a /16) but it doesn't look impossible. If they design for privacy they could develop an algorithm that works.

Not even a little bit practical. Most big lans disallow broadcasts, or limit them in various ways. The only way for peers to find each other is to know each other's private IP address. And private IP addresses contain nothing of value.

Now if you're using a VPN which you intend to use to protect your privacy, well... There are countless of other problems with that if you just turn that on, use the same software as always, and think you are now 'anonymous'.

> And if I connect with a VPN I probably don't want to bypass it. I've got customers that accept unconveniences to protect their network with VPNs. Should browsers break it with WebRTC? I didn't think so. It's a vulnerability that I keep blocked.

It's not a vulnerability. It is a very, very useful feature. You just happen to think that enabling a VPN will magically give you a privacy shield, which is misguided at best.

Re:WebRTC: the future of web games by man5quid on Tuesday December 27, 2016 @03:06PM (#13265797)
http://gafferongames.com/networking-for-game-programmers/wha...

A great series for you to read.

tl;dr

Udp is good. client to client sessions are terrible over the internet.

Re:WebRTC: the future of web games by zurn on Wednesday December 28, 2016 @07:21AM (#13270042)
The P2P case this article discusses is "peer-to-peer lockstep", which is only a small subset of possible p2p systems.

(it's called peer-to-peer instead of client-to-client, because there is no client role in such a system).

Re:WebRTC: the future of web games by k__ on Tuesday December 27, 2016 @04:02PM (#13266158)
A nice.

Didn't know that. But makes sense.

In the WebRTC case, the server could simply be a "peer" too :)

Re:WebRTC: the future of web games by fulafel on Wednesday December 28, 2016 @01:37AM (#13268864)
What aspect are you worried about?

In terms of plain and direct security holes in WebRTC, there is an extended attack surface. But your browser has this enabled anyway, no matter what you as an application developer or end user do.

In terms of security properties delivered to the application/end user, there are security and privacy advantages in end-to-end communication instead of involving servers. But it all depends on your use case and threat model.

Re:WebRTC: the future of web games by banachtarski on Wednesday December 28, 2016 @12:12AM (#13268571)
Just read the docs. WebRTC data channels are SCTP which is built on DTLS (datagram transport layer security) which uses the identical algorithm as TLS for encrypting traffic. It's as secure as TLS is, and hopefully you're using 1.2 or so.
Re:WebRTC: the future of web games by flamedoge on Tuesday December 27, 2016 @08:51PM (#13267852)
Games usually require central authoritative server for low latency and preventing cheating
Re:WebRTC: the future of web games by omginternets on Tuesday December 27, 2016 @03:01PM (#13265766)
All I know (and this may not be relevant to you) is that WebRTC (can? will?) bypass Tor.
Re:WebRTC: the future of web games by k__ on Tuesday December 27, 2016 @03:03PM (#13265783)
All I read was that it can directly connect two PCs, even if they are behind a NAT, which sounded like a cool idea at first.

But having random sites doing this, didn't feel right to me.

Re:WebRTC: the future of web games by MichaelGG on Tuesday December 27, 2016 @03:17PM (#13265860)
The real issue is that WebRTC ignores your proxy settings. This is obviously incorrect behaviour.

Also there's no reason to allow silent P2P connections.

Re:WebRTC: the future of web games by cjbprime on Tuesday December 27, 2016 @04:09PM (#13266202)
If you're thinking of the bug that exposed private IP addresses to the browser, it was fixed years ago.
Re:WebRTC: the future of web games by pmontra on Tuesday December 27, 2016 @05:52PM (#13266940)
It's not fixed, see your addresses at https://www.privacytools.io/webrtc.html
Re:WebRTC: the future of web games by pthatcherg on Tuesday December 27, 2016 @06:31PM (#13267225)
If you want to force all traffic through a proxy, you must enable it using an extension, such as this one:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/webrtc-network-lim...

Re:WebRTC: the future of web games by lallysingh on Tuesday December 27, 2016 @04:42PM (#13266440)
There isn't a solid UDP proxying story for browsers, generally.
Re:WebRTC: the future of web games by omginternets on Tuesday December 27, 2016 @05:04PM (#13266594)
Is there a technical reason for this?
Re:WebRTC: the future of web games by ronsor on Tuesday December 27, 2016 @07:11PM (#13267437)
Yes: it's not possible. Neither Socks(Tor) nor HTTP proxies forward udp. Only VPNs - which is an OS-level configuration (normally anyway)