Brave-browser: Brave constantly polling sites in the background, please stop.

[notoriousturtle]

Description

Brave is constantly polling:

GET /data/price?fsym=ETH&tsyms=USD HTTP/1.1
Host: min-api.cryptocompare.com

and

GET /v2/blacklist HTTP/1.1
Host: api.infura.io

Web3 provider for dapps is set to none.

If I browse to brave://wallet it loads the new wallet page, with hardware wallet connector options.

Steps to Reproduce

Intercept traffic with a web proxy.

Expected result:

To not constantly poll anything.

Brave version (brave://version info)

1.5.115 Chromium: 80.0.3987.149 (Official Build) (64-bit)

[snieg]

Same here, even if crypto wallet and rewards are disabled - also I can see a lot of connections to api.infura.io.

So far I've blocked it directly on PiHole and after 1 day both domains appeared in Top Blocked Domains ;)

Version 1.7.92 Chromium: 80.0.3987.163 (Official Build) (64-bit)

[notoriousturtle]

Yeah, and some of those requests to api.infura.io are big!

[ChrisB85]

I have also noticed this and honestly, I don't like it. I'm not using Crypto Wallet feature.

[notoriousturtle]

@BrendanEich can we get some movement on this?

[bsclifton]

@bbondy @ryanml I believe these are only reached if user visits brave://wallets page, right?

Unfortunately even if you are not enabling, just visiting the page I believe causes the extension to load

[snieg]

@bsclifton Nope, it's constantly polling min-api.cryptocompare.com & api.infura.io (even if you're not visiting brave://wallets).

Almost 1k requests daily:

[bsclifton]

@snieg correct - I think just visiting the page once activates the extension (and the extension may be polling those URLs)

Looks like @bbondy has a fix coming up with https://github.com/brave/brave-core/pull/5513 😄

[srirambv]

Moving to 1.10.x Beta as brave/brave-core#5624 is uplifted

[kjozwiak]

Verification PASSED on macOS 10.15.5 Catalina x64 using the following build:

Brave | 1.10.81 Chromium: 81.0.4044.138 (Official Build) beta (64-bit)
-- | --
Revision | 8c6c7ba89cc9453625af54f11fd83179e23450fa-refs/branch-heads/4044@{#999}
OS | macOS Version 10.15.5 (Build 19F101)

Test Case #1

• Launched 1.10.81 CR: 81.0.4044.138 and loaded brave://wallet in a new tab without opting into Crypto Wallets
• ensured that Extensions: Crypto Wallets wasn't being launched
• ensured that there weren't any mainnet-infura calls being made while Extensions: Crypto Wallets wasn't running (waited ~30min)

Test Case #2

• Launched 1.10.81 CR: 81.0.4044.138 and loaded brave://wallet in a new tab
• Opted into Crypto Wallets and ensured that Extensions: Crypto Wallets was launched
• ensured that mainnet-infura.brave.com calls were being made while Extensions: Crypto Wallets was running
• ensured mainnet-infura calls are going through the brave.com proxy

Example:

outgoing to mainnet-infura.brave.com (151.101.125.7), Port https (443), Protocol TCP (6), 23.3 kB sent, 1.73 MB received

• Restarted the browser and ensured Extensions: Crypto Wallets wasn't running andmainnet-infura` calls are not being made.

QA also went through several cases re: lazy loading Crypto Wallets via https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/9757#issuecomment-638480788.

Verification passed on

Brave | 1.10.82 Chromium: 81.0.4044.138 (Official Build) dev (64-bit)
-- | --
Revision | 8c6c7ba89cc9453625af54f11fd83179e23450fa-refs/branch-heads/4044@{#999}
OS | Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

Test Case #1

• Loaded brave://wallet in a new tab without opting into Crypto Wallets
• ensured that Extensions: Crypto Wallets wasn't being launched
• ensured that there weren't any mainnet-infura calls being made while Extensions: Crypto Wallets wasn't running (waited ~30min)

Test Case #2

• Loaded brave://wallet in a new tab
• Opted into Crypto Wallets and ensured that Extensions: Crypto Wallets was launched
• ensured that mainnet-infura.brave.com calls were being made while Extensions: Crypto Wallets was running
• ensured mainnet-infura calls are going through the brave.com proxy

• Restarted the browser and ensured Extensions: Crypto Wallets wasn't running andmainnet-infura` calls are not being made.

[kjozwiak]

@srirambv let me know if there's anything else that needs to be checked that I might have missed with the above STR 👆

[srirambv]

Verification passed on

Brave | 1.10.81 Chromium: 81.0.4044.138 (Official Build) beta (64-bit)
-- | --
Revision | 8c6c7ba89cc9453625af54f11fd83179e23450fa-refs/branch-heads/4044@{# 999}
OS | Windows 10 OS Version 1809 (Build 17763.379)
Component | 0.1.54

• Verified there is no calls to api-infura.io or min-api.cryptocompare.com when component is not loaded
  

  - Verified all calls are proxied through ${network}-infura.brave.com

Verification passed on

Brave | 1.10.81 Chromium: 81.0.4044.138 (Official Build) beta (64-bit)
-- | --
Revision | 8c6c7ba89cc9453625af54f11fd83179e23450fa-refs/branch-heads/4044@{# 999}
OS | Linux
Component | 0.1.54

• Verified there is no calls to api-infura.io or min-api.cryptocompare.com when component is not loaded
  

  - Verified all calls are proxied through ${network}-infura.brave.com

Verification passed on

Brave | 1.10.81 Chromium: 81.0.4044.138 (Official Build) beta (64-bit)
-- | --
Revision | 8c6c7ba89cc9453625af54f11fd83179e23450fa-refs/branch-heads/4044@{# 999}
OS | macOS Version 10.15.4 (Build 19E287)
Component | 0.1.54

• Verified there is no calls to api-infura.io or min-api.cryptocompare.com when component is not loaded
  

  - Verified all calls are proxied through ${network}-infura.brave.com

[bsclifton]

@CHEF-KOCH can you please try Beta / Dev / Nightly channel? The fix is not in release channel yet. Will be in our next release (as confirmed by QA above). Thanks! 😄