Cable Forum - View Single Post - Rapidshare etc

17-03-2007, 22:59

It isn't down to bad programming.

The problem is that the "x-forwarded-for" header, which is used to determine your actual IP address when making a HTTP request through a proxy, is totally unreliable. There is no way to check that it isn't fake.

If RapidShare used the x-forwarded-for header instead of the IP of the host making the request, you could easily write a program or plug-in for Firefox which made requests with random IPs. You could then download as much and as often as you wanted to.

Web proxies are a nasty hack.

17-03-2007, 22:59	#7
mojo Guest Posts: n/a	Re: Rapidshare etc - let's all complain to NTL It isn't down to bad programming. The problem is that the "x-forwarded-for" header, which is used to determine your actual IP address when making a HTTP request through a proxy, is totally unreliable. There is no way to check that it isn't fake. If RapidShare used the x-forwarded-for header instead of the IP of the host making the request, you could easily write a program or plug-in for Firefox which made requests with random IPs. You could then download as much and as often as you wanted to. Web proxies are a nasty hack.