Brave appears to install VPN Services without user consent - gHacks Tech News
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Brave Software appears to be installing VPN services on Windows devices without user consent during Brave Browser updates.

If you have the Brave Browser installed on your Windows devices, then you may also have Brave VPN services installed on the machine. Brave installs these services without user consent on Windows devices.

Brave Firewall + VPN is an extra service that Brave users may subscribe to for a monthly fee. Launched in mid-2022, it is a cooperation between Brave Software, maker of Brave Browser, and Guardian, the company that operates the VPN and the firewall solution. The firewall and VPN solution is available for $9.99 per month.

  • hottari@lemmy.ml
    419·
    1 year ago

    I don’t use Windows but if you install a program that requires a service on Linux, the service will be written to your system’s services daemon awaiting your activation. I don’t see what the issue with that is.

    • citytree@lemmy.ml
      82·
      1 year ago

      What’s to stop the installer on Linux from configuring the service such that the service always runs on boot? e.g. systemctl enable malware.service.

      • Possibly linux@lemmy.zipEnglish
        42·
        1 year ago

        Linux doesn’t have “installers” as Linux uses package managers. The only way you can get malware is if you manually add a bad repo.

        So it doesn’t really matter in the long run

      • hottari@lemmy.ml
        211·
        1 year ago

        You still need to manually enable the service. The configuration of the service has zero effect on its activation or lifecycle.

        • calm.like.a.bomb@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          81·
          1 year ago

          Huh? Any script can create a service, enable it and then start it. What would make you think the brave package (or just the application itself) can’t do this?

          • hottari@lemmy.ml
            19·
            1 year ago

            Not possible to start or enable a created service without user intervention. You don’t know what you are talking about.

            • Ferk@kbin.social
              101·
              1 year ago

              Systemd “enabled” services are literal symlinks… whenever a target runs, it tries to start also all the service files on its “wants” directory.

              You can literally enable any service for next boot by making a symlink in /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/ (or whichever other target you want it to run on) as root (and installation scripts are run as root).

              ln -s /usr/lib/systemd/system/whatever.service  /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/whatever.service
              • hottari@lemmy.ml
                12·
                1 year ago

                This is actually very close (just tested and confirmed it). I somehow stand corrected about requiring manual enablement but this is just using the package manager to do the dirty work for you.

                However the program itself cannot write into those directories without root permissions. You still have to allow your package manager to do this with root permissions as mentioned.

            • calm.like.a.bomb@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
              51·
              1 year ago

              OK… challenge accepted. Maybe you don’t know about systemd user services.

              Content of mytrojan.sh:

              #!/usr/bin/env bash

echo "Writing the service unit file"

cat > ~/.config/systemd/user/my_test_service.service << EOF
[Unit]
Description=Script Daemon For Test User Services

[Service]
Type=simple
User=
#Group=
ExecStart=/home/user/bin/myscript.sh
Restart=on-failure
StandardOutput=file:%h/log_file

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target
EOF

echo "Reloading systemd for the user"
systemctl --user daemon-reload || exit 1

echo "Enabling and starting the service"
systemctl --user enable --now my_test_service.service

              Content of myscript.sh:

              $ cat ~/bin/myscript.sh
#!/usr/bin/env bash

while true
do
    now=$(date)
    me=$(whoami)
    echo "User $me at $now"
    sleep 10
done

              Now run the script (mytrojan.sh) and check service status after that:

              $ ./mytrojan.sh
Writing the service unit file
Reloading systemd for the user
Enabling and starting the service
$ systemctl --user status my_test_service.service
● my_test_service.service - Script Daemon For Test User Services
     Loaded: loaded (/home/user/.config/systemd/user/my_test_service.service; enabled; vendor preset: ena>
     Active: active (running) since Thu 2023-10-19 12:15:21 EEST; 6s ago
   Main PID: 1666383 (myscript.sh)
      Tasks: 2 (limit: 18757)
     Memory: 556.0K
        CPU: 4ms
     CGroup: /user.slice/user-1000.slice/user@1000.service/app.slice/my_test_service.service
             ├─1666383 /bin/bash /home/user/bin/myscript.sh
             └─1666387 sleep 10

Oct 19 12:15:21 tesla systemd[1866318]: Started Script Daemon For Test User Services