1720838 - [devtools-rfc] DevTools remote-debugging should enable navigator.webdriver

Status: NEW

(DevTools :: General, task, P3)

Description

[Julian Descottes [:jdescottes]]

Even though RDP is not really intended to be used by external tools, people can still use it to automate Firefox and potentially use it for scraping purposes.

Websites can normally detect automation tools & scrapers by checking the navigator.webdriver property.

We might have to enable this as soon as the DevTools server accepts a remote debugging connection.

This will have the side effect that legitimate remote debugging (eg testing a website on Firefox for Android) will also be detected as automation from the website's point of view. But it's apparently what happens for Chrome as soon --remote-debugging-port is passed.

Similarly this will also impact 3rd party tools which use RDP for DevTools-like purposes such as the VSCode plugin.

We should first check the current behavior of other browsers to verify that they enable navigator.webdriver in remote debugging scenarios.

Comment 1

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+1] (away from Feb 12th - Feb 22nd)]

Just to add this might only be necessary when DevToolsSocketStatus.opened is true, means -start-debugger-server is set. But as James pointed out on Slack it might be good to check how Chrome behaves under such a condition.