Insert cookie/flash-cookie from external domain / cross-domain. API - api

I need to track visitors.
I have a script (http://example.com/something.aspx) that saves all the visitor data (like browser, referrer, etc.) into a DB and insert a flash-cookie in the visitor machine for further tracking.
Right now I insert that script using an iframe in each page I want it to work.
The script need to be in the same domain of the page for it to work.
I use this script in a number of domains, so for each domain I have the same script installed in each domain.
I want to provide some kind of javascript API to be able to use only one script for all the domains. "One Script to Rule them All".
Its important to know that I own all the domains.
It is possible? How to achieve cross-domain?
Thanks.

I would try the following approach, but have not tested the whole thing.
insert into the page.
The record-and-set-cookie.aspx page will record agent info into a database (this part I am sure will work), and then return javascript that will set a cookie (this part can work, but needs confirmation).

Related

Is there a quick way to detect redirections?

I am migrating a website and it has many redirections. I would like to generate a list in which I can see all redirects, target and source.
I tried using Cyotek WebCopy but it seems to be unable to give the data I need. Is there a crawling method to do that? Or probably this can be accessed in Apache logs?
Of course you can do it by crawling the website, but I advise against it in this specific situation, because there is an easier solution.
You use Apache, so you are (probably) working with HTTP/HTTPS protocol. You could refer to HTTP referrer, if you use PHP, then you can reach the previous page via $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER']. So, you will need to do the following:
figure out a way to store previous-next page pairs
at the start of each request store such a pair, knowing what the current URL is and what the previous was
maybe you will need to group your URLs and do some aggregation
load the output somewhere and analyze

What is preventing people from using someone else's CAPTCHA as their own?

Why (other than moral reasons) don't more people use the CAPTCHAs of other sites as their own while selling the solving of said CAPTCHAs?
To me, such a system seems like it would be simple to implement:
set up a script that does something on another website that requires a CAPTCHA to be completed through the use of a proxy service
when a user on your site performs a task that requires the completion of a CAPTCHA, simply serve them the CAPTCHA that the other
site asks you to solve
when the user solves the CAPTCHA, your script can perform the desired action on the other site that is the source of the CAPTCHA,
and the user on your site is also verified through this process
Is this commonplace? If not, why not? What, if anything, could be done to prevent this?
Fetching the captcha. Assuming one could easily fetch the exact visual of the captcha from the foreign host. To do this, you have to pass the referral check (most browsers (navigated by humans) allow to send the http_referer). You also would have to save the session_id and the secret from the hidden input.
Checking the result. The foreign host must link the saved variables with the ones associated with the session of your first request, which requires you to implement tricky cURL methods. You would have to handle multiple parallel requests, all from your single ip.
Your server will probably use more resources when hacking a captcha on a foreign host than if it generates a captcha on its own.
Prevents
http_referer check
limit requests for single IP to e.g. 5 / minute
good session handling and tricky cookies
it's not impossible to reverse engineer javascript, but the more complicated your javascript is, ...
you have to find a pattern that recognizes the result on the foreign host. the easiest signature may be the Location header field, leading either to /path/success.html or /path/tryagain.php
Challenge:
I took a moment to prepare an example: http://woisteinebank.de/test/
In this example, I attach keys to the session_id(); and save it in the database.
Through session_regenerate_id(); I have a fresh session on every request.
In check.php, I compare the database values to the $_GET values.
Try to find a way to get leech this captcha, I'll try to defend. Everytime you sucessfully use my captcha on your site, I try to defend it.

getting full URI + extra #segment in Apache logs

I would like to track users clicks on my website.
For that purpose, I would like to take advantage, if possible, of my Apache log system, which already tracks many things.
The idea would be, putting inside my source page "source.html" a link to "target.html" in the following way:
<a href='target_url.html' OnClick ='window.location="target_url.html#key"'>my mink which i want to track...</a>
with a well chosen key (typically, source url + link id + ...)
If the Apache log system could store the full path "target.html#key" whenever a user follows the link, it would be great, but as it is now, my Apache log system removes the last segment, and only stores the path "target.html".
Any idea on this issue ?
Many thanks by advance,
r.
URL segments are not passed to the server, their implementation is completely up to the client side (the browser). URL segment will never appear in logs, not will it back send to back-end scripts.

Figure out if a website has restricted/password protected area

I have a big list of websites and I need to know if they have areas that are password protected.
I am thinking about doing this: downloading all of them with httrack and then writing a script that looks for keywords like "Log In" and "401 Forbidden". But the problem is these websites are different/some static and some dynamic (html, cgi, php,java-applets...) and most of them won't use the same keywords...
Do you have any better ideas?
Thanks a lot!
Looking for password fields will get you so far, but won't help with sites that use HTTP authentication. Looking for 401s will help with HTTP authentication, but won't get you sites that don't use it, or ones that don't return 401. Looking for links like "log in" or "username" fields will get you some more.
I don't think that you'll be able to do this entirely automatically and be sure that you're actually detecting all the password-protected areas.
You'll probably want to take a library that is good at web automation, and write a little program yourself that reads the list of target sites from a file, checks each one, and writes to one file of "these are definitely passworded" and "these are not", and then you might want to go manually check the ones that are not, and make modifications to your program to accomodate. Using httrack is great for grabbing data, but it's not going to help with detection -- if you write your own "check for password protected area" program with a general purpose HLL, you can do more checks, and you can avoid generating more requests per site than would be necessary to determine that a password-protected area exists.
You may need to ignore robots.txt
I recommend using the python port of perls mechanize, or whatever nice web automation library your preferred language has. Almost all modern languages will have a nice library for opening and searching through web pages, and looking at HTTP headers.
If you are not capable of writing this yourself, you're going to have a rather difficult time using httrack or wget or similar and then searching through responses.
Look for forms with password fields.
You may need to scrape the site to find the login page. Look for links with phrases like "log in", "login", "sign in", "signin", or scrape the whole site (needless to say, be careful here).
I would use httrack with several limits and then search the downloaded files for password fields.
Typically, a login form could be found within two links of the home page. Almost all ecommerce sites, web apps, etc. have login forms that are accessed just by clicking on one link on the home page, but another layer or even two of depth would almost guarantee that you didn't miss any.
I would also limit the speed that httrack downloads, tell it not to download any non-HTML files, and prevent it from downloading external links. I'd also limit the number of simultaneous connections to the site to 2 or even 1. This should work for just about all of the sites you are looking at, and it should be keep you off the hosts.deny list.
You could just use wget and do something like:
wget -A html,php,jsp,htm -S -r http://www.yoursite.com > output_yoursite.txt
This will cause wget to download the entire site recursively, but only download endings listed with the -A option, in this case try to avoid heavy files.
The header will be directed to file output_yoursite.txt which you then can parse for the header value 401, which means that the part of the site requires authentication, and parse the files accordingly to Konrad's recommendation also.
Looking for 401 codes won't reliably catch them as sites might not produce links to anything you don't have privileges for. That is, until you are logged in, it won't show you anything you need to log in for. OTOH some sites (ones with all static content for example) manage to pop a login dialog box for some pages so looking for password input tags would also miss stuff.
My advice: find a spider program that you can get source for, add in whatever tests (plural) you plan on using and make it stop of the first positive result. Look for a spider that can be throttled way back, can ignore non HTML files (maybe by making HEAD requests and looking at the mime type) and can work with more than one site independently and simultaneously.
You might try using cURL and just attempting to connect to each site in turn (possibly put them in a text file and read each line, try to connect, repeat).
You can set up one of the callbacks to check the HTTP response code and do whatever you need from there.

Refresh browser via cron(or not) to a different page on remote request?

I need to display pages in a tutorial fashion. I looked in to netsupport, beamyourscreen and other possibilities but, I do not want the viewers to download anything. I cannot use gd / send screenshots due to audio / video instructions embedded in some of the pages.
Basically, I need the ability to "refresh" a users browser window to a different page via an interface on my end. Whether via a form submission, javascript or any other type of "controller" that allows me to change the page on the viewers browser. PERL preferred but, PHP / javascript whatever works and is cross browser. I set up a simple javascript page forward timer that "works" but, page load times and conversation interruptions are a huge factor.
The entire tutorial website will be developed around this ability.
I was looking in to curl / cron / wget methods but, found little information.
I have seen forum and chat scripts that basically perform a similar task but, there must be a simple(ish) solution in leau of hacking up another script to suit my needs.
I do not want others to control the pages either. The site really, only needs to be accessable during the tutorial however, It "could" remain web accessable as long as user interaction was normal unless (being controlled).
The initial site concept is based on instructing people how to properly introduce new pets into a home. Will be operated by a veteranarian that saved my pets life. I wanted to give something back.
Possible? I really appreciate simple examples etc...
You have no other way but to keep polling the server for "instructions" using javascript. No, you can't send nothing to the end user browser, neither curl nor wget.
Mainly, you'll have to set up a simple request/response protocol between the browser and the server.
If you want to go deeper, you can use something like cometd/meteord/etc. If not, a hidden iframe that reloads himself and receives pages with javascript code for the needed actions can do the trick.
Another alternative.
With javascript dopolling and single character flatfile. Have a simple one character flatfile with a single var. Write it in perl (it is faster and uses less resources than php). The parent script calls a javascript variable in a flatfile. It hits the flatfile and goes wherever the var sets it. The flatfile is written to by the controller. Done.
I guess you could also rename an empty flatfile and use that as the controller. I am usure which is faster, open and read a specific file or hit the directory and return the file name. On the controller side, opening and writing to a file vs renaming a file. Maybe they counter each other in resources and time?
This way the site can act as a normal site. When you want to have remote users see a "presentation" (automatically being shown the site pages at the controllers pace), the controller activates polling and tells the viewers to push a start button. This allows a remote instructor to load pages for the viewers at his leisure.
It is a simple solution that works with nothing really sophisticated going on. No frames are needed either. Just need javascript enabled.
Any better suggestions are welcome!
It occurred to me that what you might want to use is HTML Push technology. Check out the wiki, they have several links. I have never used it myself