Here is a common problem. You have to write an web-based email, im, ssh, xmmp, SMB, etc. client which must connect to a server other then the originating one. What do you do then? Hint: You cannot use Java!

internet

Well, due to the fact the the browser has no idea how to spawn a tcp socket, you are stuck in the proxy-land. Typically you will write an application that will do a lot of transcoding and state management. You need to come up with your own messaging protocol to speak to the backend, and the backend needs to be programmed to respond back in the same way. As you can guess, this is a difficult problem which requires a lot of work.

Lucky for developers, there’s a way to quickly employ the power of tcp sockets without the need to deal with all the complexity. There are a few projects that already do that but the most interesting one is js.io, a JavaScript Network Library.

I am not planning to get into any details of how the technology works. It is based on push-back AJAX and you if you want to learn more just Google it.

Anyway, undoubtedly this is a very exciting, new technology. And like any other new technology it will be full of bugs and it will take some time to understand it completely. However, due to its sexiness, I can see how it may soon become part of the standard AJAX stack of technologies.

Perhaps you can already see the problem. Perhaps you can even think how this can be exploited. Perhaps you are thinking right now that Wireshark does not have TCP over AJAX over TCP dissector. Well, at least this is what I am thinking. But no matter what you and I think soon we may have to rediscover all TCP vulnerabilities of the past.