# Encrypted Client Hello (ECH) launch by Mozilla and Cloudflare **URL:** https://discuss.privacyguides.net/t/encrypted-client-hello-ech-launch-by-mozilla-and-cloudflare/14250 **Category:** General **Created:** 2023-10-04T07:32:34Z **Posts:** 38 ## Post 1 by @Alvah.Lind64 — 2023-10-04T07:32:34Z This past week in [Firefox 118 launched support for ECH](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/understand-encrypted-client-hello) and [Cloudflare also](https://blog.cloudflare.com/announcing-encrypted-client-hello/). What is it? ECH is a successor to [ESNI](https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/ssl/what-is-encrypted-sni/) and masks the Server Name Indication (SNI) that is used to negotiate a TLS handshake. SNI being unencrypted is the reason why ISPs can detect what domains you visit, whereas HTTPS is what prevents ISPs knowing what exact webpages you visit. Instead of seeing “[privacyguides.net](http://privacyguides.net)” for example, for every website with ECH-enabled it’ll show “[cloudflare-ech.com](http://cloudflare-ech.com)”. ECH requires DNS-over-HTTPS to be enabled in order to work. I ignored DoH when it was launched before - it’s a downgrade in privacy if you’re already using a VPN by having to share SNI with an additional third-party, but it looks like now it might be worth reconsidering. What are your thoughts? What are the pros/cons with utilising this? What data could an ECH+DoH provider obtain? What are the likely consequences for state actors or commercial entities in response to this? --- ## Post 2 by @anon66890361 — 2023-10-04T08:03:33Z As far as i can remember they have been announcing this for about 2 years now. The technology is useful for users privacy and also would allow users to overcome internet censorship in some regions. The problem that its having a very low rate of adoption since first it was announced. cloudflares own esni checker website doesn’t support ECH (last time i checked). I would definitely use it as early as possible as i wouldn’t trust my isp in this regard. If i get a good provider for ECH my use case for VPN will be over. --- ## Post 3 by @Regime6045 — 2023-10-05T12:21:01Z Would this be useful when using a VPN? Or in other words: does an unencrypted client hello leak “past” the VPN to the actual ISP? (I don’t think it does) --- ## Post 4 by @ph00lt0 — 2023-10-05T15:27:37Z I have to look into this. On first glance it just seems to move the trust from ISP to cloudflare. Not per se a bad thing but it also makes it very centralized. --- ## Post 5 by @Alvah.Lind64 — 2023-10-05T19:12:00Z [AlternativeTo](https://alternativeto.net/news/2023/10/mozilla-rolls-out-new-encrypted-client-hello-privacy-standard-to-all-firefox-users/): > ECH complements other security and privacy features in Firefox, including DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH), which must be enabled in the Firefox settings for ECH to function. When used in conjunction with a virtual private network (VPN), DoH and ECH provide an additional layer of privacy and security. In this setup, the VPN conceals the user’s IP address and encrypts data traffic, while ECH protects the identities of the visited websites from the VPN provider. @dngray is it true it works like this? --- ## Post 6 by @ignoramous — 2023-10-06T22:33:27Z > [@Alvah.Lind64](#): > > @dngray is it true it works like this? Not dngray, but it _is_ true, yes. --- ## Post 7 by @dngray — 2023-10-07T04:55:50Z Yes, it, prevents disclosure of the domain through SNI, we talk about that on this page: > **[DNS Overview - Privacy Guides](https://www.privacyguides.org/en/advanced/dns-overview/#server-name-indication-sni)** > > The Domain Name System is the --- ## Post 8 by @lovfi — 2023-10-07T05:41:01Z I’ve been using ECH today while checking the domains of sites I visited with Portmaster, and there was only 1 site that it seemed hadn’t adopted it. Admittedly, I’m not an avid browser, and I tend to stick with the same few sites for what little I do on the internet. Today though, I tried searching up a few random topics I had on my mind just to test it out, and I was pleasantly surprised to see how many sites it worked for. I have high hopes for adoption rates in the future. --- ## Post 9 by @anon66890361 — 2023-10-07T07:35:03Z can you provide links of some websites that you know supports ech , because i couldn’t find any apart from cloudflares own ech checker website [https://crypto.cloudflare.com/cdn-cgi/trace](https://crypto.cloudflare.com/cdn-cgi/trace). Also i am not sure but in order for this to work websites need to use cloudflare as their domain provider and enable it from there. So websites not using cloudflare won’t be supporting it. (firefox 118.0.1 still doesn’t support ech out of the box , you need to enable some flags in about:config menu.) --- ## Post 10 by @user1 — 2023-10-07T07:36:54Z How did you configured Portmaster to let the browser use DOH and ECH? I had to exclude firefox in portmaster to had it working. --- ## Post 11 by @anon66890361 — 2023-10-07T07:38:53Z use wireshark on pc or pcapdroid on android to see whats the browser connecting to and how --- ## Post 12 by @user1 — 2023-10-07T07:44:15Z > [@anon66890361](#): > > can you provide links of some websites that you know supports ech , because i couldn’t find any apart from cloudflares own ech checker website Try this one [Welcome to defo.ie](https://defo.ie/ech-check.php) --- ## Post 13 by @anon66890361 — 2023-10-07T07:49:11Z > [@user1](#): > > Try this one [Welcome to defo.ie](https://defo.ie/ech-check.php) this doesn’t support ech , it just checks ech status of your browser. --- ## Post 14 by @ignoramous — 2023-10-07T09:19:36Z > [@anon66890361](#): > > this doesn’t support ech , it just checks ech status of your browser [https://tls-ech.dev/](https://tls-ech.dev/) (refresh the page the first couple times, if it fails). --- ## Post 15 by @Anon — 2023-10-10T02:22:39Z In the future when ECH becomes as standard as protocols like TLS, ISPs may start to maintain IP reverse lookup databases to continue tracking you. Also if you don’t use a VPN, proxy, or Tor, the website you access can still track you. So I don’t think ECH rollout will void the use cases for a VPN. --- ## Post 16 by @jonah — 2023-10-10T04:16:08Z > [@anon66890361](#): > > Also i am not sure but in order for this to work websites need to use cloudflare as their domain provider and enable it from there. So websites not using cloudflare won’t be supporting it. Currently, yes, and also there’s really no point for website operators to use ECH unless they are on a shared hosting provider like Cloudflare anyways, so it doesn’t really matter. Like enabling ECH on this website we’re on would provide nearly 0 benefit, for example. > **[Firefox will soon enable Encrypted Client Hello by default](https://discuss.techlore.tech/t/firefox-will-soon-enable-encrypted-client-hello-by-default/5730/6?u=jonah)** > > ECH (formerly eSNI) solves a separate problem. Generally there are three privacy problems with HTTPS: The IP of the server you’re accessing is always visible → This is solved if the website’s IP address is shared with a ton of other websites,... --- ## Post 17 by @anon66890361 — 2023-10-10T04:19:48Z VPN will still be relevant as their are some regions which use IP based blocking for censorship than going for SNI or dns based. Though it seems , in case of ECH provided by cloudflare, the traffic would appear to come from cloudflare servers as they are behind cloudflare CDN. So there still be no way of finding out actual website visited through reverse ip lookup. Atleast this is what appears to be the case in my limited usage. --- ## Post 18 by @ph00lt0 — 2023-10-10T17:13:58Z How does this all compare to ODoH? > **[Improving DNS Privacy with Oblivious DoH in 1.1.1.1](https://blog.cloudflare.com/oblivious-dns/)** > > Oblivious DoH (ODoH) makes secure DNS over HTTPS (DoH) queries into private queries which prevent the leakage of client IP addresses to resolvers. The new proposed ODoH standard addresses this problem and today we are enabling users to use this... --- ## Post 19 by @ignoramous — 2023-10-10T17:47:43Z > [@ph00lt0](#): > > How does this all compare to ODoH? ODoH adds another encryption layer atop existing encryption provided by TLS. ODoH has similar security and privacy guarantees to DNSCrypt v3. ECH is _for_ TLS v1.3. It encrypts the `ClientHello` part of the handshake which carries hostname in plaintext (this often is the domain name of the service itself). --- ## Post 20 by @ph00lt0 — 2023-10-10T18:24:56Z Should you have any good content that explains this in more detail, I would love to receive it. --- ## Post 21 by @ph00lt0 — 2023-10-15T10:03:44Z Pretty good explanation of it: > **[Piped](https://piped.video/watch?v=vKc1w58nlvw)** > > An alternative privacy-friendly YouTube frontend which is efficient by design. --- ## Post 22 by @anon21489307 — 2023-10-17T19:42:20Z Regarding ECH, I am still trying to understand the concept of ECH. I get it that by enabling ECH in my browser, the other end (the website I visit) has to be ECH enabled too. Otherwise, it’s useless. But if I want to hide the domain name from my VPN using ECH, **does the ECH have to be supported from my VPN provider, or does it still have to be supported from each website?** Thanks in advance. --- ## Post 23 by @jonah — 2023-10-17T19:45:10Z To hide it from your VPN provider each website would have to support it. --- ## Post 24 by @Voilable — 2023-10-17T21:04:23Z each website owner has to enable it, but iirc cloudflare has disabled it for now because of some issue. --- ## Post 25 by @xe3 — 2023-10-17T21:18:17Z Do note that even with ECH enabled, your VPN provider will be able to see the IP addresses of all the websites/remote servers you connect to (with the exception of those behind cloudflare, a cdn, or some other middle man). So it would offer some protection for some % of websites, but it is not a reliable way to hide the websites you visit from your VPN (even if 100% of websites were to support ECH). Could you elaborate on your threat model? What your primary motivation for trying to hide your browsing from the VPN itself? I have some thoughts but I want to make sure I’m thinking about the same threats/risks you are before responding. --- ## Post 26 by @anon21489307 — 2023-10-17T21:22:40Z Yes, they disabled it becase of some issues. I don’t know whether it will be enabled by default in the future (soon?). And on the client side, if the users use Warp, ECH won’t be usable even if the browser enabled it. I don’t know whether we can expect ECH to change anything. The websites and especially VPN providers that voluntarily enable ECH would probably not want to joke with us in the first place. IMO, the requirement is far too high to make this actually work. --- ## Post 27 by @anon21489307 — 2023-10-17T22:03:13Z Thanks! I don’t want to put my trust very much on the VPN providers because I don’t want to choose between them and my ISP. Both of them are centralized services and we know very little about how they actually work behind the door. Sure, with offerings like an open-source client, no logging policy, diskless servers, etc., including ECH support, would make the service more appealing. But it’s still based on assumption and trust model, not by design. ECH is unreliable at best as websites have to enable it voluntarily. And I don’t know whether I can expect browsers to reject a fallback to non-ECH connection in the near future. **Therefore, my threat model is a reasonable (not necessarily maximum/absolute) secure + privacy system by design that isn’t based on trust.** I found Tor is a good model, but it has some limitations to be used system-wide and is rejected on some sites. Portmaster’s SPN is definitely better than VPN as they mixed community nodes with their managed servers (but their client doesn’t seem to work on my openSUSE at all). Mysterium’s dVPN seems to be the best, but I haven’t tested it yet. Now, I use Warp whenever I feel like it. But mostly on just Quad9. Rarely on Tor since it doesn’t work on everything. --- ## Post 28 by @xe3 — 2023-10-18T00:27:11Z Based on your goals/priorities. I think one potential solution that would be better than relying on ECH, or suffering through full-time system wide TOR experience, might be using two VPN’s in combination. At least one of which you pay for anonymously. This could to some degree emulate _some_ of the benefits of a TOR like system, for less severe threat models. It would essentially be creating your own double hop VPN, but unlike a double hop VPN, you would not be placing your trust in just one entity. - The first ‘hop’ would know your IP as well as the IP of the second ‘hop’ VPN server, but would have no ability to see any of your web or dns traffic, and could not see the IP addresses you connect to beyond the second hop. - The second ‘hop’ could see the IP addresses you connect to, and could see all web traffic leaving their servers (most or all of which would be encrypted with HTTPS (and possibly ECH) and DoH/DoT, but they could not see your true IP address, they would see the IP of the first hop server. TL;DR This arrangement would _partition trust_ so that no single service could know both (1) who you are / IP (2) the sites you visit. Of course the downside of this is the cost of paying for two separate VPNs, and the complexity of using them in combination. --- ## Post 29 by @anon21489307 — 2023-10-18T00:34:52Z Thanks! However, instead of buying from / trusting 2 _centralized_ VPNs, would it be better to use a _decentralized_ VPN? The latter would run on fully decentralized nodes, of which the provider has no control or whatsoever, providing it runs open-source on both the nodes and the clients sides. --- ## Post 30 by @xe3 — 2023-10-18T00:52:39Z I think we are getting further and further off topic (its my fault, you asked about ECH, I proposed something else) which should probably be its own topic. Is the Decentralized VPN you are thinking about an actual thing that exists? Or a hypothetical? To my unexpert ear, it sounds roughly similar to Apple’s private relay (in concept) --- ## Post 31 by @jonah — 2023-10-18T01:00:31Z There’s Safing, which is sort of in between iCloud+ Private Relay and Tor, and there’s INVISV Relay which is just Apple’s solution but for Android. These multi-party relays are a concept that I think will (or at least should) probably start becoming more popular, because it’s a clear fit for a lot of companies. In fact, I wish all these companies who have been partnering with Mullvad lately would do this instead. Like instead of Mozilla VPN or Tailscale connecting you directly to Mullvad’s endpoint, if your traffic was first routed to servers owned by Mozilla or Tailscale or whoever, and _then_ relayed to Mullvad’s endpoints, that would be very cool. That way the end user only has to pay one party, and that party handles paying Mullvad. --- ## Post 32 by @anon21489307 — 2023-10-18T01:15:02Z > Is the Decentralized VPN you are thinking about an actual thing that exists? Or a hypothetical? There’s **[Mysterium](https://www.mysteriumvpn.com/mysterium-vpn-v2)**. All the source codes are available on their **[GitHub](https://github.com/MysteriumNetwork)**. It runs on real people internet/nodes. Those people get paid from running their nodes. It’s Web 3.0 for VPN, similar to Storj for cloud storage. It has 7 days trial, which I haven’t try it yet. Sure, it seems off-topic now :sweat_smile: --- ## Post 33 by @anon21489307 — 2023-10-18T01:21:10Z Safing’s Portmaster SPN is still running on _some_ of Safing managed servers. And I believe those servers are the majority of the network power, since community nodes don’t get paid. See more about this **[here](https://wiki.safing.io/en/SPN/Nodes/Hosting#:~:text=shutting%20down%E2%80%9D%20messages.-,rewards%20for%20running%20a%20spn%20community%20node,-We%20are%20extremely)**. It’s still better than a centralized VPN, though. --- ## Post 34 by @anon63378630 — 2024-05-18T20:16:08Z Not to necro this thread, but Cloudflare appears to have disabled ECH for majority of its sites: [https://community.cloudflare.com/t/early-hints-and-encrypted-client-hello-ech-are-currently-disabled-globally/567730/20](https://community.cloudflare.com/t/early-hints-and-encrypted-client-hello-ech-are-currently-disabled-globally/567730/20) --- ## Post 35 by @exaCORE — 2024-05-19T05:58:43Z Unfortunate… why did they disable it? --- ## Post 36 by @anonymous261 — 2025-04-24T00:43:45Z Sorry for necro’ing even more, but ECH [seems to be back on by default](https://blog.cloudflare.com/new-standards/) for [free Cloudflare sites](https://community.cloudflare.com/t/encrypted-client-hello-is-gone/719594/4) Also, on that tls-ech.dev website, for some reason it says ECH is turned on with and without a VPN, with and without Secure DNS in my browser, without Private DNS in the operating system --- ## Post 37 by @jonah — 2025-04-24T01:40:13Z On the (cooler) self-hosting side of things: Five days ago Caddy released ECH support too, _as far as I know_ they are the first major webserver software to do so :tada: > **[Release v2.10.0 · caddyserver/caddy](https://github.com/caddyserver/caddy/releases/tag/v2.10.0)** > > Caddy 2.10 is here! Aside from bug fixes, this release features: > > Encrypted ClientHello (ECH): This new technology encrypts the last plaintext portion of a TLS connection: the ClientHello, which in... --- ## Post 38 by @user1 — 2025-04-24T06:39:42Z Cannot reproduce. If my vpn is on, ech is disabled on brave and firefox. I have to turn off the vpn or use the secure dns in browser (bypassing the vpn dns) to have ech working. The trade off It’s not clear for me. Is it better to have ech enabled and be on a smaller pool of a vpn + third party dns or the other way around? I lean for the latter.