Comment by diggan | Hacker News Reader

Comment by diggan | Hacker News Reader

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Seems Blast uses browser-use (https://github.com/browser-use/browser-use) which seems to be some client specifically for AIs to connect to/run browser runtimes.

Unfortunately, it seems like browser-use tries to hide that it's controlled by an AI, and uses a typical browser user-agent: https://github.com/browser-use/browser-use/blob/d8c4d03d9ea9...

I'm guessing because of the amount of flags, you could probably come up with a unique fingerprint for browser-use, based on available features, screen/canvas size and so on, that could be reused for blocking everyone using Blast/browser-use.

If calebhwin wanted to make Blast easier to identify, they could set a custom user-agent for browser-use that makes it clear it's Blast doing the browsing for the user.

Can browser-use be blocked using Anubis or other anti-bot measures?

I think these kind of requests can not be blocked. It is like asking if Claude computer control can be blocked from visiting websites. It is not detectable. You could ofc display captchas which are difficult to solve for an AI.

As mentioned, browser-use doesn't seem "out of this world" hard to fingerprint since all instances would be using the exact same settings.

Browser-use just switched to patchright https://github.com/Kaliiiiiiiiii-Vinyzu/patchright which is an “undetectable” version of Playwright and can rotate/randomize fingerprints. Another extension uses residential proxies and pulls real fingerprints of real people.

Sorry if I'm missing something, but why can't Anubis not detect/block such AI agents? Is it because they use headful browsers?

Yes, they are doing the Proof of Work. If need be, we will completely emulate human-like mouse movements. These are essentially clients no different from real users.

But the thing is, the more they push for this, the less accessible websites will get, so there has to be another solution. Not everyone uses a mouse.

Source: I work in the industry.

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