Dev team builds browser proxy extension, uncovers silent tunnel reuse bug in Firefox and Edge

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A pay-as-you-go proxy service has launched a browser extension for Firefox and Microsoft Edge, replacing a cumbersome manual setup process with a simple popup interface. The extension allows users to select a country, IP type, and toggle the proxy on or off with ease. During development, engineers discovered that both browsers silently reuse authenticated proxy tunnels, causing country-switching to have no visible effect without a browser restart. To work around the issue, the team implemented a technique of generating a unique hostname per configuration change, forcing each browser to treat it as a new proxy connection with a fresh authentication cache. A single wildcard DNS record routes all generated hostnames to the same gateway, making the fix transparent on the server side while resolving the caching behaviour in both browsers.

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