The latest version of Google Chrome on the Canary channel allows users to enable the experimental Encrypted Client Hello (ECH) feature, also known as Secure SNI, which is primarily used to enhance the privacy protection of Internet connections.
The core of ECH is to ensure that hostnames are not exposed to ISPs, network providers and other entities with the ability to listen to network traffic. The latest Chrome Canary release is a taste of what’s to come, meaning other Chromium-based browsers including Microsoft Edge, Opera, Vivaldi and others will follow suit.
Mozilla has already deployed support for ECH on Firefox in 2021.
The steps to enable it are as follows.
- Make sure the latest version of Chrome Canary is installed. Users can visit chrome://settings/ help, and Chrome will check for updates and will install any updates it finds. A restart will then be required to complete the update. 2.
- Load chrome://flags/#encrypted-client-hello in the address bar of your browser.
- Set Encrypted ClientHello to “Enabled
- Restart Google Chrome again
Google’s description of this feature is as follows.
“When enabled, Chrome will enable Encrypted ClientHello support. If the server enables this extension via HTTPS DNS records, TLS ClientHello will be encrypted.”
