Description of the issue:
No websites will load in Brave. When attempting to open a URL for any website I continually receive the following error (ERR_TIMED_OUT) one example: " This site can’t be reached. youtube.com took too long to respond."
How can this issue be reproduced?
Launch Brave (in normal or Private mode)
Enter any URL into the address bar, press Enter
Loading indicator will spin but sometimes not even the header of the website loads, it times out.
Actual Result:
After entering URL of website and hitting enter the loading indicator will spin. I’ve checked the brave.exe process with ProcessExplorer in Windows I see the Remote Address state is set to “Established” but no HTTP/S requests start to show up as would be expected with a normal page load.
Expected result:
The URL entered into the address bar should trigger an initial HTTP/S request that then provides a response and triggers additional requests with the normal expected loading of any website or page.
Brave Version( check About Brave):
Version 1.65.114 Chromium: 124.0.6367.60 (Official Build) (32-bit)
Additional Information:
Microsoft Windows 11 Business
Version 10.0.22631 Build 22631
I’ve checked the brave.exe process with ProcessExplorer in Windows… I see the Remote Address state is set to “Established” but never changes until it just drops off when the timeout seems to hit. Using Inspect and looking at the Network tab in Brave shows the initial request of the URL but only shows minimal information. Request header says “Provisional headers are shown” and the waterfall of the page it’s attempting to load, in this case, https://youtube.com has a waterfall that extends past 30000ms then just drops off (that must be the default timeout in settings).
This is only started today 18 April 2024 in Brave for me but I help support a larger non-profit that some users who have had this exact same issue with Google Chrome randomly, it’s not all users but those that have had this issue have had to resort to using a different browser. Somehow Microsoft Edge does not seem to be affected by the same issue for users that do have the problem (myself included).
Things I have tried (with no change in result):
Creating a new profile
Clearing all the browsing data for all time.
Running ipconfig /flushdns and then testing again
Rebooting and testing the above again.
Is there some advanced debugging or logs that I can enable to try and assist getting this figured out?
Have tried with Shields up and down, VPN disabled, same results.
Firefox, Chrome, and Edge all pull up the pages fine.
This started happening immediately after the update.
Yes, it does occur on chrome.exe on some computers (not mine on Version 123.0.6312.124 (Official Build) (64-bit)) but it does appear to be “spreading” to others as they are restarting computers, etc. so it may very well be upstream with Chromium? I updated my Chrome to the latest and still no issues.
It’s happened on machines with no third party AV (Windows Defender only), with and without VPN software; uninstalled and tested with now change.
I reinstalled Brave just a couple minutes ago and I was able to access web resources on our internal network (private IP addresses of web servers and by FQDN) and because all sites load fine in Firefox, MS Edge I don’t believe it’s anything network or DNS related.
Is there some way we could further log or see a verbose output of what the process is doing when these requests are attempted to try and narrow it down?
We did come to a resolution this morning. It seems that Brave and other Chromium-based browsers started implementing TLS 1.3 and HSTS but the SSL inspection on our FortiGate firewalls was causing the issue. This seems to be a known issue with firmware versions prior to 7.0 as the IPS Engine didn’t fully support TLS 1.3 and does some (for lack of better term) funky stuff when responding to sites that try to negotiate TLS 1.3, thus the initial request and no response ever comes back. I found this reddit posts that were similar enough and helpful to read up on it.
If you’re on a network you control check to make sure you’re running the latest firmware for your router/internet gateway or if you’re on a corporate/business network ask the network administrator to check out the post I made above this regarding issues our Fortinet firewall was causing this issue.