Sunday, July 26, 2020

Show HN: Open-source isolated browser, free for journalists etc.

  • Live stream the browser remotely.
  • Perform remote browser isolation for security and automation.
  • Run your browsers anywhere and connect to them from anywhera.
  • Isolate your network from the risks of the public internet by running browsers in a remote machine.
  • Connect to Chrome headless with a Browser User Interface

Who uses this for free?

  • Private individuals for non-commercial use
  • Journalists for publicly available publications (so not specialized corporate press or internal publications), researches at public institutions, government officers and members of non-profits in the course of their work, so long as you self-host and deploy yourself, or if you need help for deployment contract Dosyago corporation to help you with that.

Who pays to use this?

  • Anyone who deploys this for use in a for-profit environment, as part of any project intended to make money, or anyone non-covered by the free use exemption above.

News

  • July 26 2020 Merge changes from live demo into docker, npm and binaries.
  • July 18 2020
    • New client web app bundling improves load speed of browser UI.
    • Remove UI icons from .gitignore because they're no longer added on install, but instead are always in the repo.
    • New docker builds and releases incorporating these changes.
  • July 18 2020 Bug fix on master: Remove UI icons from .gitignore because they're no longer added on install, but instead are always in the repo.
  • July 15 2020 Run or install as global via npx remoteview@latest or npm i -g remoteview@latest (Working!)
  • July 14 2020 New Binary releases!. Binaries now come with default args. Platforms available: Mac, Win, and Nix.
  • July 13 2020 New Docker Hub image with latest changes: dosyago/browsergapce:2.2

About

This is a feature-complete, clientless, remote browser isolation product, in HTML/JavaScript that runs right in your browser. Integrated with a secure document viewer (available on request), this can provide safe remote browser isolation at deployments of any size. It also saves you bandwidth (on the last hop, anyway).

Animated GIF of BrowserGap in action

You see that? ☝️ That's a browser running in your browser. All those tabs and UI, that's all BrowserGap. It's sending you pixels from a remote browser, running anywhere.

You can use this repo to play with a browser running remotely in the cloud, rather than on your own device. Useful for security and automation.

If you're a developer you can include a "BrowserView" in any other web application (for non-commercial use only).

If you're like to deploy this in your org, or for a for-profit project, write me: cris@dosycorp.com Or keep an eye out for the cloud service, coming soon. Official government use OK without purchase (also for university/public institution researchers, journalists and not-for-profits), as long as deployment is done in-house (or using Dosyago Corporation, not by other contractors, nor part of a paid deployment). If you're in government and you'd like to deploy this and want help, contact me for help or to discuss a deployment contract.

localhost:8002

By default (unless you provide command line arguments) it runs on port 8002.

Why this over Solution X?

Sure, other companies might have bigger brands and bigger sales budgets, but this is open-source. You can vet the code, in the open, and so can anyone. You know there's nothing hidden inside. Plus, future updates have all the benefit of open-source software.

There's a lot of competition out there, BrowserGap art more lovely and more temperate. Here's a selection of the most notable:

  • WEBGAP INC. Fully hosted and managed solution. Aiming to cover the nexus of "low cost, widespread use", starting at just 5USD a head. I have not evaluated it, and there's no demo and no source code. But the website is beautiful! And it's seed funded by a Royal Highness in the Al-Saud family 😎 how cool! Co-founder Guise Bule, a tech-marketing veteran based stateside who describes himself as having "built some of the world's first remote browser platforms" at the NNSA, blogs profusely about RBI and has recently joined the ranks of some regional Security and tech "think tanks", including Singapore's ITSEC and Silicon Valley Bank's Brains Trust.
  • McAfee nee Light Point Security, the veterna cybersecurity incumbent acquired Light Point, a nascent (but also long-lived) RBI startup in 2020, which was founded around 2012 by ex-members of the US Intelligence Community, Beau Adkins and Zuly Gonzalez. Again, there's no source-code and no demo and I have not evaluated the software, though it seems it is a highly user-focused web application, that is described in their PR copy as a clientless pure HTML/JavaScript RBI solution. The founders of the Maryland-based startup surely know what they are talking about.
  • Isoolate founded by Turkish ex military-tech contractors, is headquartered in the United States, and staffed with around 10 people around the world (including New Zealand!), develops a Chrome Extension (and possibly other software) that assists the client choose whether they want to access a page locally, or remotely, aiming to provide a seamless and highly-configurable experience.

The main advantages of BrowserGap over any of these are:

  • Free (for non-commercial or governmental use when self-hosted) and open-source. You can pay for install, or maintenance, or a managed cloud service (bring your own cloud, also OK!).
  • Fully clientless (runs in your browser, nothing to download, but also available as download if you want to run locally easily).
  • Not hiding anything. You can use the software now, and see how it works. No need for us to grant you lengthy demos to evaluate. You can try it yourself whenever you like.

Can I use this for Use Case Y, or Domain Z?

Probably. If you can think of it, you can probably do it.

Get and self-host

Glone this repo

git clone https://github.com/dosyago/BrowserGap.git

Then run npm i in the repository directory.

or Install from npm

npm i -g remoteview@latest

Remember to follow the install prompt

Easy install trouble shooting

Windows systems (and Mingw and Cygwin)

Pre-requisites: Windows with Google chrome already instaled.

If you're on Git Bash (or Cygwin, or Mingw) you might have trouble using npm i -g remoteview.

Make sure you configure npm

npm config set script-shell "C:\\Program Files\\git\\bin\\bash.exe"

Also, don't worry about running "setup_machine" at the prompt, because it uses apt-get which won't work on Windows anyway.

Normally, a Windows device with chrome already installed won't need to run "setup_machine" anyway, which is a script to install things like fonts, graphics libraries and some utilities useful for running headless Chrome in linux.

Binaries

Pre-requisites: Windows, Mac OS or Linux with Chrome already installed.

If you use a binary, make sure you have Google chrome installed. You might also need to run the setup_machine.sh script, to make sure you have all dependencies of Google chrome headless installed, but probably not if you have Windows.

Docker build

Get it on docker hub, and see instructions below.

Headless Detection

Even tho RV uses headless Chrome, it attempts to conceal that fact. Sometimes, a service knows (such as Google, Google always knows). But othertimes the service cannot tell. For some tests of headless, visit the following when using RV:

In depth

BrowserGap is a platform for live streaming the browser, with full interactivity. It lets you plug in to a local or remote, even a headless browser, and fly it as if it's a normal browser.

You can stream a remote browser with special cusotmizations to your clients to side step the restrictions of regular browsers. You can use it to build rich experiences based on the browser that are not possible using Flash, Browser Extensions or regular Web Driver protocol.

For business enquiries, please contact Cris

Watch the 16 second video.

BrowserGap is a HTML/CSS/JavaScript "ground control" or "remote control" for a browser. It also looks and works just like a browser, but it runs in your browser and controls another browser.

browser in a browser

Managed Cloud Service (coming soon)

Free Demos (currently disabled)

Inquire about demos: cris@dosycorp.com

Secure Cloud Based Internet Isolation Version for organizations

Read more here

License And other Details

Formerly BrowserGap Community Edition. Currently called BrowserGap, and lets you interactively live-stream a remote browser.

This work is released under an OSS license, and is © Cris Stringfellow. All my own work.

For business inquiries, mail me

Around 30,000 source lines of code (see stats folder)

Set up using a blank machine (running Linux)

First set up the machine with git, and node (including nvm and npm) using the below:

If you want to speed up install and it hangs on processing triggers for man-db you can remove all your man pages (WARNING), with: sudo apt-get remove -y --purge man-db

sudo apt update && sudo apt -y upgrade
sudo apt install -y curl git wget
udo apt-get update && sudo apt-get -y upgrade
sudo apt -y install curl nodejs certbot vim
curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_10.x -o nodesource_setup.sh
sudo bash ./nodesource_setup.sh
sudo apt -y install nodejs build-essential
curl -sL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/creationix/nvm/v0.33.11/install.sh -o install_nvm.sh
bash ./install_nvm.sh
source $HOME/.profile
source $HOME/.nvm/nvm.sh
nvm install --lts
sudo apt autoremove
npm i -g serve nodemon pm2 npm npx
sudo npm i -g serve nodemon pm2 npm npx

Then install and run BrowserGap from source:

git clone https://github.com/dosyago/BrowserGap
cd BrowserGap
npm i
npm start

Docker

Note: running from docker image means you have no sound

You can pull an existing image from docker hub (already docker pulls)

docker pull dosyago/browsergapce:2.2

And then run it

curl -o chrome.json https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dosyago/BrowserGap/master/chrome.json
sudo su -c "echo 'kernel.unprivileged_userns_clone=1' > /etc/sysctl.d/00-local-userns.conf"
sudo su -c "echo 'net.ipv4.ip_forward=1' > /etc/sysctl.d/01-network-ipv4.conf"
sudo sysctl -p
sudo docker run -d -p 8002:8002 --security-opt seccomp=$(pwd)/chrome.json dosyago/browsergapce:2.0

You can also build a docker image from source yourself.

Set up the machine (as above in the Set up section), then

use clone the repo and install docker (build_docker.sh will do that for you) and build yourself an image:

git clone https://github.com/dosyago/BrowserGap
cd BrowserGap
npm i
./buld_docker.sh
./run_docker.sh

And visit http://<your ip>:8002 to see it up.

😎 Awesome

Coming here from Awesome Chrome DevTools?

Take a look at the Zombie Lord connection and Translate Voodoo CRDP.

Opening DevTools

Just connect your browser to http://localhost:5002 from the machine you run it on.

Connecting puppeteer

Just run PPTR on the same machine as this and connect to http://localhost:5002



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