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Bypassing firewalls that block by "User_agent"

PostPosted: Mon Feb 28, 2005 7:08 am
by nashr
I'm setting up a security workstation in a corporate environment that utilizes a firewall to only allow certain browser types. I can easily set up all the necessary values for my web browsers, and have gotten things working on both Windows and Linux(Fedora3) platforms, but I was running into problems wtih ActivePerl's PPM (Perl Package Manager). I have now solved this issue and wanted to share this with others that may be in a similar situation.

DISCLAIMER: Don't do this without the knowledge and permission of your bosses and the Owner/Manager of your network environment!!!

Sorry, but I had to get that out of the way.

Now, PPM uses a Perl Client to download desired Perl Modules that have been compiled for use with ActiveState. PPM can be configured to use a proxy, but there's no way to directly modify the User-Agent. Here's the fix.


Download and install Privoxy
Tell PPM that Privoxy is your proxy (127.0.0.1:8118)
Tell Privoxy to use your corporate proxy
Tell Privoxy to send the appropriate User-Agent string!

Works great, and now I can get all my Perl Modules down into ActivePerl!!!

PostPosted: Mon Feb 28, 2005 4:41 pm
by The Others
Also useful for those sometimes pesky /robots.txt files