Brave Browser release info

[Tiamati]

OK, all you can do is wait for support. I know they have a small staff relative to the number of posts. They are quick to respond to some and not others, so they must have some sort of priority rating/system to handle all they receive.

Unfortunately, their support is a joke. I've already made a few posts there and got only 1 ##### answer. I've been trying to use Brave for sometime now, but their lack of support + bugs with sync made me come back to chrome... For now, it's my 3th browser... after Firefox

Hey @oldschool , do you know if brave sync is still buggy?

Seems to me this is on Heimdal

Btw, Heimdal use Avira engine isn't? Someone got any reports from Avira AV?

 

[stefanos]

Had another look at the VT link provided by Heimdal support and saw these?

View attachment 236018

Anyone knows why were these files detected at the time?

FP. turn off your antivirus and download the exe

 

[SeriousHoax]

From the VT report it looks like that particular website of Brave was compromised in the past. There were many detection originating from that source. Maybe this is why Heimdal was still skeptical about its safety. Since even Brave team recently talked about updating their server, I guess now they have fixed it completely and convinced Heimdal that everything is okay now so no more detection.

 

[Divine_Barakah]

Btw, Heimdal use Avira engine isn't? Someone got any reports from Avira AV?

The detection was made by Heimdal DarkLayer Guard (its web protection) and not by signatures.

 

[Tiamati]

The detection was made by Heimdal DarkLayer Guard (its web protection) and not by signatures.

ty!

 

[oldschool]

Hey @oldschool , do you know if brave sync is still buggy?

It's still having problems and the setting is only brave://flags. They are working on it and things may have slowed due to pandemic.

 

[Nightwalker]

Stay calm folks, it is just a false positive from a not-so good "security" vendor; the VirusTotal Report is showing files with the same name (Files Referring), it doesnt mean that specifically Brave files were detected as malware.

PS: My advise for you all is to stop using those snake oil "security" solutions, the "great" Dark Guard Layer is just using some host file in a local DNS resolver.

GitHub - StevenBlack/hosts: 🔒 Consolidating and extending hosts files from several well-curated sources. Optionally pick extensions for porn, social media, and other categories.

🔒 Consolidating and extending hosts files from several well-curated sources. Optionally pick extensions for porn, social media, and other categories. - StevenBlack/hosts

github.com

PS2: Heimdal staff wil obviously deny this, it would be too embarrassing.

 

[James246]

Sure, but no answer from Heimdal either. They were quick enough to answer @James246 query initially that it was malware. Do they have trouble admitting mistakes?

If the detection relates to APT Strain then probably only Heimdal would detect it, and if implemented by a 5 Eyes State Actor then everyone will be quiet

 

[oldschool]

Stay calm folks, it is just a false positive from a not-so good "security" vendor; the VirusTotal Report is showing files with the same name (Files Referring), it doesnt mean that specifically Brave files were detected as malware.

PS: My advise for you all is to stop using those snake oil "security" solutions, the "great" Dark Guard Layer

Finally, some sanity.

I will say Brave is buggy - most being its broken sync and rewards (apologies to users who like these features!) - but it is a good browser with a small, dedicated staff. Their forum support is challenged because of those two features. Bug reports and questions about adblocking, updating and other essential features are addressed fairly promptly.

And I will say this: Brave Community is hands down better than the M$ Edge Insider forum. The latter is full of discussions and arguments about productivity features and bloat, and woefully short on discussions of privacy features (one of its main selling points!). And their forum is so poorly designed it's laughable. Try finding specific threads or post and you will close your browser in utter exasperation.

The Brave forum is well-designed in comparison and their staff does the best it can given their staffing.

 

[RejZoR]

I don't understand why Youtube adblocking is so challenging for them. They just can't seem to get it done where something liek uBlock just works with absolute perfection. A bit weird...

Also how they can't seem to master sync. It's just perpetually broken to a point they disabled it themselves...

 

[James246]

If the detection relates to APT Strain then probably only Heimdal would detect it, and if implemented by a 5 Eyes State Actor then everyone will be quiet

Either false positive or APT, if the latter it is no laughing matter, unauthorized access to a computer network is pretty serious.
People can draw their own conclusions from deafening silence, I think the Brave should comment

 

[oldschool]

I think the Brave should comment

I don't know why there has been no reply... ... but I've been watching the forum much more recently and these support folks appear to be doing the best job they can. I see quite a few resolved issues for features that currently work, e.g. rewards, but have glitches for certain users.

 

[James246]

I don't know why there has been no reply... ... but I've been watching the forum much more recently and these support folks appear to be doing the best job they can. I see quite a few resolved issues for features that currently work, e.g. rewards, but have glitches for certain users.

Whatever the problem (false positive or something serious) it appears to have been silently resolved now.

 

[Lenny_Fox]

@Rezjor, answer is not that complex to guess.

uBlockOrigin's scriplets and inject javascript might be considered out of (functional). scope for an adblocker. Ghostery and Disconnect won''t block first party tracking per company policy.

Brave recently has rewritten thier adblocking module. They probably developed it from third-party blocking perspective. When they wrote their new adblock module, content delivery networks started to extend their services to tracking and serving embedded advertisements. This mixing third-party content with first party content became worst when ad delivery networks started to use tricks to morph/disguise third-party content as first party.

At the moment preroll, midroll and masthead ads on Google's youtube are served as first party. So when you have designed and setup adblocking and tracking protection from a third-party perspective, your software architecture is down the drain. This hurts especially when you have optimized blocking tokens like Brave has (so it takes less time to apply filtering rules).

That is the reason Brave probably needs time to rewrite their adblocking module

 

[oldschool]

@Rezjor, answer is not that complex to guess.

uBlockOrigin's scriplets and inject javascript might be considered out of (functional). scope for an adblocker. Ghostery and Disconnect won''t block first party tracking per company policy.

Brave recently has rewritten thier adblocking module. They probably developed it from third-party blocking perspective. When they wrote their new adblock module, content delivery networks started to extend their services to tracking and serving embedded advertisements. This mixing third-party content with first party content became worst when ad delivery networks started to use tricks to morph/disguise third-party content as first party.

At the moment preroll, midroll and masthead ads on Google's youtube are served as first party. So when you have designed and setup adblocking and tracking protection from a third-party perspective, your software architecture is down the drain. This hurts especially when you have optimized blocking tokens like Brave has (so it takes less time to apply filtering rules).

That is the reason Brave probably needs time to rewrite their adblocking module

I believe you are correct. Brave has 1st party CNAME tracking on their radar but no ETA yet. So many things are in flux right now I'm sure they're just trying to keep things up and running.

Edit: Patch chrome.dns.resolve to support canonical_name flag · Issue #7117 · brave/brave-browser

 

[oldschool]

Brave update:

Version 1.5.122 Chromium: 80.0.3987.162 (Official Build) (64-bit)


Desktop

Release Notes V1.5.122

• Upgraded Chromium to 80.0.3987.162. (#8947)

 

[enaph]

Funny how they still didn't fix the issue I reported more than a month ago and still if you click on this link on brave://flags page it takes you straight to Google Chrome Beta page

Quick fix I would say...

 

[HarborFront]

I believe you are correct. Brave has 1st party CNAME tracking on their radar but no ETA yet. So many things are in flux right now I'm sure they're just trying to keep things up and running.

Edit: Patch chrome.dns.resolve to support canonical_name flag · Issue #7117 · brave/brave-browser

Meantime you can add the following to your custom filter list in your extension if it accepts it

https://hostfiles.frogeye.fr/firstparty-trackers-hosts.txt

 

[oldschool]

Meantime you can add the following to your custom filter list in your extension which can accepts it

https://hostfiles.frogeye.fr/firstparty-trackers-hosts.txt

I use Brave Shields so this is a no-go for me, AFAIK.

 

[HarborFront]

I use Brave Shields so this is a no-go for me, AFAIK.

I'm using SmartAdBlock extension and it'll allows the addition of custom filters. Since Brave itself uses many other filters from uBO/ABP/Disconnect so no point using them again. Try SmartAdBlock extension. However, it doesn't have granular controls like uBO/uMatrix but it serves its purpose well. The custom filters I added are as shown below. As for the rest of the filters in its Ad Filter List it's up to you to choose. Just make sure don't duplicate what Brave Shields already have. See filters used by Brave's Shields in the below link

Blocking goals and policy

Brave browser for Android, iOS, Linux, macOS, Windows. - brave/brave-browser

github.com