6 ms·
Most likely bot prevention & data security. There's not a huge performance hit, there's a portion that runs on page load and a smaller portion that runs on eac
by TobyTheDog123 4y ago
Most likely bot prevention & data security.
There's not a huge performance hit, there's a portion that runs on page load and a smaller portion that runs on each HTTP request (which isn't too often).
- jeroenhd 4y agoBots just run copies of Chrome these days, you're not protecting anyone with this obfuscation if the bots you're targeting can just run your code and automate the UI. With the obfuscated fingerprinting demonstrated by the virtualized code, I reckon they're doing something more malicious.
- charcircuit 4y agoYou answered it yourself. They are trying to fingerprint bots and to avoid people figuring out how to beat the fingerprint they obfuscate the code.
- lwansbrough 4y agoIn the first post about this, it was revealed they're exfiltrating detailed metrics covertly by piggybacking on regular requests.
- sweetjuly 4y agoYes, but that's not the only thing running under the VM--the entire user client is in there. This is not proof that they're evil, in fact it's identical to an anti-boting technique that was just on the front page yesterday [1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34285747 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34285747
- javier2 4y agoAt first I thought this looked kinda scary, but it makes more sense as bot prevention, and obfuscating as much as possible to hinder manipulation of data. Consider services that manipulate view stats or followers etc for payment. This ruins both tiktok, instagram and reddit revenue models.