Modrinth launcher sends network clogging amount of adware style DNS requests #5367
Description
Please confirm the following.
- I checked the existing issues for duplicate problems
- I have tried resolving the issue using the support portal
- I have ensured my Modrinth App installation is up to date
What version of the Modrinth App are you using?
0.10.29
What operating systems are you seeing the problem on?
Windows
Describe the bug
I am running a Pi-Hole network DNS server to block ads, and recently noticed my home PC was being rate limited very frequently, and the CPU load on the server was extremely high. Looking into this further, I found that the cause was the Modrinth process effectively DDOSing my Pi-Hole with hundreds of DNS requests for assorted ad servers. This persisted even after turning off personalized ads in Modrinth settings. Attached are screenshots of Wireshark of some DNS traffic, mostly originating from Modrinth.
I have no issue with Modrinth contacting ad servers, I believe it's a good service and everyone should be fairly compensated for this, however the current behavior around DNS queries for these ad servers has severely degraded the performance of my home network to an unacceptable degree. Please let me know if there's any way I can help triage this, since it has impacted my entire household.
Steps to reproduce
- Use a DNS ad blocker of some kind to prevent DNS requests to applicable ad servers from getting through
- Open Modrinth
Expected behavior
Upon opening, Modrinth should send a copious amount of DNS requests, and continue to do so until closed.
Additional context
I verified that this is Modrinth by sysmon to log what processes are sending DNS traffic, found some offending requests to ad servers, and looked up the process ID in task manager, which traced back to a WebView2 Manager process, which upon being expanded, displayed sub-processes like "WebView2: Modrinth App", along with plenty of other processes with the Modrinth favicon, and domain names of ad servers in the process name.