A brief transcript of a YouTube discussion (by Tsahi Levent-Levi) about whether WebRTC exposes users' IP addresses. Speakers explain that WebRTC can reveal IPs in some cases: historically via the ICE process, currently gated by GetUserMedia prompts, and publicly via STUN servers; they note that WebSocket requests also reveal the client IP and that browser prompts implicitly grant IP access to the requesting page.
Does WebRTC expose your IP addresses?
It does in some cases. And the reason that is a concern is that people are thinking that oh, my IP address, it's something private. But no, it's used to route packets to you in the network. The thing WebRC does, it gives JavaScript that IP addresses in some cases. So we have the case where it used to give out the IP address to any application that asked for it because it was part of the ice process that is now gated by GetuserMedia. So it's only for legitimate reasons mostly.
And the other thing, a legitimate reason is when there is a pop up on my browser saying is the web page is looking to access your microphone or camera. Are you fine?
Yes.
It assumes that I'm also okay with giving the browser access that specific webpage access to my IP address.
Yes. Which is a big assumption. But okay, tell the average user I need your IP address. What is going to be the answer?
Yeah, it's a reasonable one. That's okay.
Yes. And it also gives out your public IP address through a stun server. There's no way to prevent that. But then you can make a WebSocket request to any page and that also gives out your IP address to the other end.
Yeah, that's the same. Okay, thank you.
Thank you.
Meta rebuilt AV1 for mobile scale. Should smaller teams follow? | Chats with Arin
