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Cloud sessions repeatedly upload large files to ingest, causing excessive bandwidth usage #1110

Description

What happened

When using Freebuff Cloud sessions, the ingest service appears to repeatedly upload relatively large payloads/files in the background.

I observed uploads of approximately 1.5–3 MB every ~3 seconds, repeatedly during a session. This results in extremely high network usage even when I am not intentionally transferring large files.

Environment
Freebuff: Cloud session
OS: windows 10
Freebuff cloud
Connection: WiFi
Session type: Cloud
Observed behavior

During a normal Freebuff Cloud session, network traffic to the ingest service repeatedly transfers large payloads.

For example:

Individual requests/transfers: approximately 1.5–3 MB
Frequency: approximately one transfer every 3 seconds
Behavior: repeated continuously during the session
Destination observed: ingest.humanbehavior.co

At this rate, the background traffic can consume hundreds of MB per minute, resulting in massive and unexpected Internet usage.

This appears to happen automatically as part of the Cloud session, without the user explicitly requesting the corresponding data transfer.

Expected behavior

Background ingestion/telemetry should not continuously transfer multi-megabyte payloads at this frequency.

If large data uploads are required for a specific Cloud feature, I would expect them to be:

Incremental rather than repeatedly uploading large payloads.
Deduplicated so unchanged data is not uploaded repeatedly.
Rate-limited/throttled.
Clearly documented.
Ideally configurable or disableable by the user where the functionality is not essential.

This can cause extremely high bandwidth consumption and is particularly problematic for users with:

metered connections,
mobile hotspots,
bandwidth limits,
slow connections,
corporate/network usage restrictions.

It also makes it difficult for the user to understand what Freebuff is transferring and why such a large amount of data is necessary.

Request

Could you please investigate what is being uploaded by the ingest client during Cloud sessions and why multi-megabyte payloads are being sent repeatedly?

If this is intentional, it would be helpful to document:

what data is being uploaded,
why the data is needed,
how often it is uploaded,
whether the same data is uploaded repeatedly,
whether uploads can be reduced/deduplicated,
and whether users can disable or limit this behavior.

I can provide network captures/request metadata if needed.

Steps to reproduce

Start a Freebuff Cloud session.
Monitor network traffic from the Freebuff process/browser.
Observe requests to the ingest service.
Monitor the size and frequency of the outgoing requests.
The ingest traffic repeatedly transfers approximately 1.5–3 MB every few seconds.
Impact

Where does this happen?

Not sure

Operating system

Windows

Version

Cloud version

Model

No response

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    area:desktopThe Electron desktop appbot:triagedClassified by the community triage botneeds-infoBlocked on the reporter for version, OS, logs, or a reprotype:bugA defect in the code with a reproducible failure

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