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Comment by gregpr07 | Hacker News Reader

how would that work? Can you control the browser without debug mode? Especially in production the browsers are anyway running on single instance docker containers so the file system is not accesible... are there exploits that can do harm from a virtual machine?

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Yes, you can control the browser without debug mode, and the common way to do it is ChromeDriver[1].

[1] https://developer.chrome.com/docs/chromedriver/get-started

Yes, I was able to figure out a secure way to control the browser with AI Agents at rtrvr.ai without using debugger permissions/tools so it is most definitely possible.

I meant by in production in the sense how you are advising your users to setup the local installation. Even if you launch browser use locally within a container but your restarting the user's Chrome in debug mode and controlling it with CDP from within the container, then the door is wide open to exploits and the container doesn't do anything?!

Injecting JS into the page or controlling it using extension APIs is not a secure way to control the browser.

Yeah, sorta feels like docker on a new instance is safer than connecting to actual browsers and injecting js code there… would love to skip cdp protocol though, it’s quite restrictive

Are you making a straw man argument? I am not injecting js code, we solved this problem in a secure way with minimal permissions taken by our Chrome Extension, which runs in safe and secure sandbox within the browser.

Perhaps we are talking past each other, your literally giving instructions to your users to connect to their actual browsers: https://docs.browser-use.com/customize/real-browser Where under the hood your launching Chrome with debugging mode but with the user's credentials and passwords. This browser is then controlled via CDP by a highly insecure browser-use binary running in a container. Your users are bound to get pwned with this setup! https://github.com/browser-use/browser-use/blob/70ae758a3bfa...

I never mentioned injecting JS into the page, and besides injecting LLM generated code or generally remote code won't be approved by the Chrome Store https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/develop/migrate....

Your claim is analogous to saying that Apple's app store is not secure. We had to go through stringent vetting and testing by Google to list in the Chrome Store. Any basis or reasoning you can provide for your claim?

Regardless, its a wild leap to claim a Chrome Store Chrome Extension is more insecure than this arbitrary binary?

Embed a WebView instead of launching browser?

I don’t know what problems they wanted to solve but one issue is browsers are trusted, views are not, so you have to workaround fingerprinting.

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