Perplexity.ai tries to connect via UDP without being open | Hacker News Reader

Perplexity.ai tries to connect via UDP without being open

3 pointsroscas6 comments

perplexity.ai tris to make a udp connection without me having it's page open. I even removed the Chromium shortcut because it might just been that, but no. So what is going on? I've used it a few times but how is it connecting without I'm using it or even the website open?

With the website it keeps to connect to their site, ok, I don't mind, but trying to connect this is is very very... strange.

This is Chromium, their website is not open, shortcut removed, I don't even know if there is an extension but I don't have any.

Keep in mind that is is an UDP that is trying to escape my pc...

update: I suspend the pc every time, and the connection comes like 10 minutes after I'm using the network. And yes it is being made from /usr/lib/chromium

View on HN

Do you mean HTTP/3.0 (QUIC) which uses UDP? Did they perhaps install a service that checks for updates utilizing Chromium? What OS is this on? Did you capture a tcpdump of it?

I use Chromium or LibreWolf and use Perplexity site. It cannot install anything I guess as I only use it from the webpage. OS is ArchLinux with Chromium, but I did not use tcpdump yet. I will try it. I notice the connections with OpenSnitch that pop's up every call made that is not authorized. And I can see it was UDP.

I think perplexity has an app that installs via snapd and may have systemd timers but if you did not install anything then only the browser should be making calls and only when you opened it so I guess just poke around in /etc/systemd, /usr/lib/systemd and /etc/cron* to see if anything was recently added without your knowledge. Also check your browser addons.

Good luck!

The only extension I have is uBlock Origin. Arch does not have snaps. SystemD dirs look normal and no cronjobs running.

Mistery... but thanks for the tips.

But what is so strange is that there is no open page, there are no services or programs that might use it, and still, Chromium tries to connect to it, via UDP.

So either Chromium does that or perplexity installed something I don't know how.

My first guess was the shortcut's on the blank page, that somehow they manages to install some javascript or something, but I removed the shortcut and still a few minutes later to try to connect.

Let's see if it tries again. I will then put tcpdump or something else to watch and capture data, allowing to connect.

Thanks.

After a reboot, at least until now there is no connections being tried.

So my conclusion for now is, in some strange way, connections made by the site (that like so many others, keeps connecting to their servers) kept alive and retries even with the page being closed already.

So for now, it looks more like a Chromium bug.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com