I was wondering, I want to plant a JS tracking code (analytics) in a few websites to track their traffic. But I don't want that when viewing the site's source code people will be able to see that I've embedded the JS tracking code there.
Is it possible? Maybe by using an Apache/PHP trick?
Thanks,
Roy.
Nope it's not possible, for the browser to execute any code at least some of it must be initially visible, even if that code is to then retrieve the tracking code itself.
In addition all the modern web developer tools provide access to any code that is loaded so anyone can use those to see anything you've attempted to load discretely.
The more important question is why you want to hide that you're tracking people?
It's not absolutely possible with Javascript. Javascript always runs in the context of the user's browser, so it always means that the user will have access to see the script. You can obfuscate it, or try some tricks similar to anti-hotlinking on the JS code, but it will still be relatively easy for someone to figure out what the code does with a simple tool like Firebug.
You can, however, track your traffic without JavaScript. Analytics uses JavaScript for portability, and because some of the data it accesses can only be accessed with JavaScript. However, there are more passive ways of tracking your traffic which don't require JavaScript, such as any log analyzer like AWstats. You just don't get some of the cool features of Analytics.
It's not possible, but you could just name your script file something innocent like "mouseover.js".
It's not possible: JS code has to be run by the web browser, which means that -- which ever way you try put it -- it has to be readable by the browser and thus by anyone that inspects the page.
You could try obfuscating the JS, but that won't stop anyone that is determined to see what's happening.
You could ask yourself what the odds are that more than a few people will check whether you're tracking them -- I wouldn't expect it.
You can't technically hide the code... But you can scramble it so it's not readable to anybody. I used http://hivelogic.com/enkoder/form by Dan Benjamin to scrable some JS on my page (in this case I scrambled my email address). It scrambles it so the browser can execute it, but it's not humanly readable...
Then you can just call it as a function like I did in from this script http://www.jamischarles.com/css_js/email_encoder.js. Give it a try.
Related
Let's say I've to include the following line with my website header:
<script type="text/javascript" language="javascript" src="file.js"></script>
Now anyone easily can visit my--web--site/file.js and view its source.
So, I wonder if there any idea I can rename file.js to file.php and still able to call it and works fine, so that no one can view it by visiting my--web--site/file.php.
Any idea?
About the only thing you could do is to make it difficult to read and understand your JavaScript code.
Check out this post on the YUI blog about Minification and Obfuscation. Minification will have the added benfit of making your script smaller and thus load faster.
Take special note of what the article has to say in its closing paragraph:
Then finally, there is that question of code privacy. This is a lost cause. There is no transformation that will keep a determined hacker from understanding your program. This turns out to be true for all programs in all languages, it is just more obviously true with JavaScript because it is delivered in source form. The privacy benefit provided by obfuscation is an illusion. If you don’t want people to see your programs, unplug your server.
Javascript is distributed as source - if your users can't view it, they can't run it - so no, not really.
What you can do, if you are paranoid, is obfuscate and minify (google "minify javascript") the source before deploying.
This is far from bulletproof though (chrome for instance, has a very nice pretty printer in its debugging tools).
No, you cannot do this. If a person's browser is able to read your JS file, that person must also be able to read your JS file. That is how the Internet works. This is good and desirable behaviour, and you shouldn't try to keep people from reading the CSS/JS/HTML that composes your website. It is completely self-defeating and serves no purpose. Nobody is interested in stealing your JS code.
If you don't want people seeing the contents of your web page (including your JS), don't put it on the internet!
Anyone with a debugger on the client can grab your script no matter how you serve it up to the client.
No. The JavaScript file is downloaded and executed on the web browser. This means that the user needs to be able to download it.
You can obfuscate it using some kind of obfuscator that makes it a lot harder for people to read, yet keep it functional by the client.
I have seen that some web sites have a PHP script to redirect the user to another web page if they try to access JavaScript files directly. How is that done?
Unfortunately, as the previous answers have stated, you can't prevent one from seeing the contents of a JS file; if you could do that, how is the browser supposed to parse it?
The next best thing to do is to "Obfuscate" it using something like http://www.javascriptobfuscator.com/default.aspx
This will convert your human-readable code into a bunch of character codes and obscure function names. The Obfuscator I linked to generates a unique ID and bases its encryption on that ID, making it harder to decrypt.
However, this isn't fool-proof, and someone who really wants to get at your JS, for whatever reason, will do it. Anything you really don't want users to have access too should be done server-side. ;)
No, that's not possible.
There are plenty of ways how to get JS files. Nothing helps in protection.
Javascript is meant to be client side. That means it always gets executed on the browser which is local and thus can not be hidden.
Is there any way to disable or encrypt "View Source" for my site so that I can secure my code?
Fero,
Your question doesn't make much sense. The "View Source" is showing the HTML source—if you encrypt that, the user (and the browser) won't be able to read your content anymore.
If you want to protect your PHP source, then there are tools like Zend Guard. It would encrypt your source code and make it hard to reverse engineer.
If you want to protect your JavaScript, you can minify it with, for example, YUI Compressor. It won't prevent the user from using your code since, like the user, the browser needs to be able to read the code somehow, but at least it would make the task more difficult.
If you are more worried about user privacy, you should use SSL to make sure the sensitive information is encrypted when on the wire.
Finally, it is technically possible to encrypt the content of a page and use JavaScript to decrypt it, but since this relies on JavaScript, an experienced user could defeat this in a couple of minutes. Plus all these problems would appear:
Search engines won't be able to index your pages...
Users with JavaScript disabled would see the encrypted page
It could perform really poorly depending the amount of content you have
So I don't advise you to use this solution.
You can't really disable that because eventually the browser will still need to read and parse the source in order to output.
If there is something SO important in your source code, I recommend you hide it on server side.
Even if you encrypt or obfuscate your HTML source, eventually we still can eval and view it. Using Firebug for instance, we can see source code no matter what.
If you are selling PHP software, you can consider Software as a Service (SaaS).
So you want to encrypt your HTML source. You can encrypt it using some javascript tool, but beware that if the user is smart enough, he will always be able to decrypt it doing the same thing that the browser should do: run the javascript and see the generated HTML.
EDIT: See this HTML scrambler as an example on how to encrypt it:
http://www.voormedia.com/en/tools/html-obfuscate-scrambler.php
EDIT2: And .. see this one for how to decrypt it :)
http://www.gooby.ca/decrypt/
Short answer is not, html is an open text format what ever you do if the page renders people will be able to see your source code. You can use javascript to disable the right click which will work on some browsers but any one wanting to use your code will know how to avoid this. You can also have javascrpit emit the html after storing this encoded, this will have bad impacts on development, accessibility, and speed of load. After all that any one with firebug installed will still be able to see you html code.
There is also very really a lot of value in your html, your real ip is in your server code which stays safe and sound on your server.
This is fundamentally impossible. As (almost) everybody has said, the web browser of your user needs to be able to read your html and Javascript, and browsers exist to serve their users -- not you.
What this means is that no matter what you do there is eventually going to be something on a user's machine that looks like:
<html>
<body>
<div id="my secret page layout trick"> ...
</div>
</body>
</html>
because otherwise there is nothing to show the user. If that exists on the client-side, then you have lost control of it. Even if you managed to convince every browser-maker on the planet to not make that available through a "view source" option -- which is, you know, unlikely -- the text will still exist on that user's machine, and somebody will figure out how to get to it. And that will never happen, browsers will always exist to serve their users before all others. (Hopefully)
The same thing is true for all of your Javascript. Let me say it again: nothing that you send to a user is secure or secret from that user. The encryption via Javascript hack is stupid and cannot work in any meaningful sense.
(Well, actually, Flash and Silverlight ship binaries, but I don't think that they're encrypted. So they are at the least irritating to get data out of.)
As others have said, the only way to keep something secret from your users is to not give it to them: put the logic in your server and make sure that it is never sent. For example, all of the code that you write in PHP (or Python/Ruby/Perl/Java/C...) should never be seen by your users. This is e.g. why Google still has a business. What they give you is fundamentally uninteresting compared to what they never send to you. And, because they realize this, they try to make most things that they send you as open as useful as possible. Because it's the infrastructure -- the Terrabyte-huge maps database and pathfinding software, as opposed to the snazzy map that you can click and drag -- that you are trading your privacy for.
Another example: I'm not sure if you remember how many tricks people employed in the early days of the web to try and keep people from saving images to disk. When was the last time you ran across one of those? Know why? Because once data is on your user's machine, she controls it. Not you.
So, in short: if you want to keep something secret from your user, don't give it to her.
You cant. The browser needs the source to render the page. If the user user wishes the user may have the browser show the source. Firefox can also show you the DOM of the page. You can obfuscate the source but not encrypt or lock the user out.
Also why would you want this, it seem like a lame ass thing to do :P
I don't think there is a way to do this. Because if you encrypt how the browser will understand the HTML?
No. The browsers offer no ability for the HTML/javascript to disable that feature (thankfully). Plus even if you could the HTML is still transmitted in plain text ready for a HTTP sniffer to read.
Best you could do would be to somehow obscure the HTML/javascript to make it hard to read. But then debuggers like Firebug and IE 8's debugger will reconstruct it from the DOM making it easy to read,
You can, in fact, disable the right click function. It is useless to do so, however, as most browsers now have built in inspector tools which show the source anyway. Not to mention that other workarounds (such as saving the page, then opening the source, or simply using hotkeys) exist for viewing the html source. Tutorials for disabling the right click function abound across the web, so a quick google search will point you in the right direction if you fell an overwhelming urge to waste your time.
There is no full proof way.
But You can fool many people using simple Hack using below methods:
"window.history.pushState()" and
adding oncontextmenu="return false" in body tag as attribute
Detail here - http://freelancer.usercv.com/blog/28/hide-website-source-code-in-view-source-using-stupid-one-line-chinese-hack-code
You can also use “javascript obfuscation” to further complicate things, but it won’t hide it completely.
“Inspect Element” can reveal everything beyond view-source.
Yes, you can have your whole website being rendered dynamically via javascript which would be encrypted/packed/obfuscated like there is no tomorrow.
I was recently visiting a site and noticed that the page had a section that said it noticed that I was using AdBlocking software and could I kindly turn it off to help support a small site like that.
I was just wondering how you would do that? Would it be best done client-side or server-side?
This is something that simply can't be done server side - there's zilch reason for person to knock on your door and say "Look at me, I have AdblockPlus!". When on the client side, adblock is actively trying to influence the page content, which is something you can see happen and see that they are using an adblocker.
Anyway, I happened to know that newgrounds.com is doing this too. (their new layout was screwed up for adblock plus users - as a response they made a contest for the best "if you're not going to help us through our ads, go and buy something in the store"-banner.
A quick look in the source of newgrounds told me they are doing this with some simple javascript.
First in the document:
var user_is_leecher = true;
Next there is a external script tag: src=checkabp?thisistotrickabp=***adress of ad affilliate***
Now the joke: they simply trust adblock plus to filter that script out, as all that's in there is: user_is_leecher = false;
From there, they can do just about anything.
All off the methods mentioned here rely on the ad blockers to strip out code. This doesn't work for some adblockers(like NetBarrier on Mac). You also have to keep updating your code when the adblockers catch on.
To detect if the user is blocking ads, all you have to do is find a function in the ad javascript and try testing for it. It doesn't matter what method they're using to block the ad. Here's what it looks like for Google Adsense ads:
if(typeof(window.google_render_ad)=="undefined")
{
//They're blocking ads, do something else.
}
This method is outlined here: http://www.metamorphosite.com/detect-web-popup-blocker-software-adblock-spam
You could do it on server side by pairing requests for html pages and for the acording ads (probably with some unique identifiers to each request ...) ... But this is just an idea, i've never tried it and never even seen it used.
I found this part in the code which seems to look like how they did it:
/*MOOTOOLS*/
window.addEvent('domready', function(){
$$('.cat-item').each(function(el) {
var fx = new Fx.Morph(el,{ duration:300, link:'cancel' });
el.addEvents({
'mouseenter': function() { fx.start({ 'padding-left': 25 }); },
'mouseleave': function() { fx.start({ 'padding-left': 15 }); }
});
});
if ($$(".google-sense468")[0] && $$(".google-sense468")[0].clientHeight == 0 && $('block-warning')) $('block-warning').setStyle('display','block');
});
/*MOOTOOLS END*/
I guess there are several ways of doing it, but probably the easiest one would be to have some kind of background image, or text, that will be replaced when the ad is loaded. Thus, if the ad gets loaded, you see the ad. If the ad doesn't load, you see the text.
This example would be client side, done by either JavaScript or just plain CSS might even suffice.
There might be some server-side gimmicks that could do this too, but they would be unnecessarily elaborate and clunky. One method that springs to mind would include some kind of API with the advertiser that could be asked "did the user from IP such.and.such load any images?" and in that way get the answer. But I doubt there's such services - it would be much easier to do on the client side.
I believe that is much easier to do it on client side than in server side. Ad blockers are installed on the client, so they can manipulate DOM and block ajax requests. That's why I believe it makes more sense to detect on the client than on the server.
Anyway, this is a standalone simple plugin that detects users with ad blockers enabled, it's open-source and the full code is on github:
https://github.com/retargetly/mockingbird
It's more publisher oriented so they can easily show messages on the ads containers or in a popup. The plugin is frequently updated, and it's worth a try. This is the fiddle also:
http://jsfiddle.net/retargetly/9vsha32h/
The only method you need to use is
mockingbird.adsBlocked(Obj)
The call can be done anywhere in the code and you don't need jQuery to make it work.
Wish you luck !
I don't think there is an easy way to do this. What you can do is to create "trap". Make a php script listen to a very obvious url like yourdomain.com/ad.png. You can probably achieve this by url rewriting. If this page is loaded you can note this in a session variable and send back a 1x1 blank png.
On the next request you can see whether ad.png has been loaded. If it hasn't you can guess that the client is using some form of AdBlock software. Make sure you set the appropriate http headers to prevent clients from caching "ad.png".
This is the only server side approach I can think of at the moment and it has some flaws.
The png file can be cached regardless of the http headers
This will not work for the first http request
Some extra server load as browsers will keep hitting ad.png for each request
That the image gets loaded from the server is no guarantee for it actually being displayed
Probably more side effects that I haven't thought of
Please make a comment on this post if you decide to try it out.
Regarding a client side solution. This shouldn't be to difficult. You can create a tiny Javascript to run on page load complete. This script can check that the page contains the dom-nodes holding the ads. If you this when the page is loaded completely (not only the dom) you can check the width and height of your ad images. The most obvious drawback with this solution is that clients can disable javascripts.
A few good answers here, so I'll just add this:
use some ad management system (You can write Your own). With that, track every ad that's being displayed (and make it obvious, like ads.php or showad.php or whatever). If that script is never called, the user is using SOME form of ad blocking software.
Be sure to handle each and every ad through that handler, though. Mod_Rewrite isn't required, it can be done using simple PHP.
What you can do to detect the adblocker on the server-side is somithing like:
<?php
header('Content-Type: application/javascript');
//Save it to session
session_start();
$_SESSION['noAdblocker']=true;
?>
noAdblocker=true;
Save this file as ads.php
Now the index.php:
<?php
session_start();
$_SESSION['noAdblocker']=false;
?>
<!DOCTYPE HTML><html><head>
<!-- Now place the "ad-script" -->
<script src="ads.php"></script>
</head><body></body></html>
You can add javascript-code to your page, that is only executed if there's no adblocker, e.g. use "ad" as variable-name, use "ad.js" as file-name.
This code sends an ajax-event to the server, saying "this user doesn't use an adlocker". So if you don't receive that event, you know, that this user is blocking ads or even javascript altogether.
I've tried searching everywhere but there's seems to be no implementation available other than having the client use a file (batch/exe of some sort).
You just can't do it. PHP is server side scripting language, maybe you can do that using JavaScript, but I'm not even sure about that.
I know someone implemented such service, but actually he had to use Mozilla browser, which opened, a script (I think it was not JS, maybe perl, c/c++) made a screenshot and uploaded it.
I'm assuming you mean "your" in the general sense. If you mean "how does one take a screenshot...", you generally hit the print screen key. If you're trying to capture your users' browser output, I'd say that it's probably not possible. If it were, the best you could get is the output of what you wrote yourself.
Google Gears might be hackable to do something close, if you can simulate the print screen key press with JS and get the file to save somewhere gears can access.
You can't do that in PHP, as PHP is running on the server, and not the client.
To get screenshots of the browser, you can take a look at, for instance, this list.
If you are look for an automated solution to take screenshot of web pages opened in a browser window, you could also look at this question : How to capture x screen using PHP, shell_exe and scrot and it's answers.
And, finally, and without selecting any particular post, you can try a search on SO ; something like screenshot browser, sorted by relevance, seems to get some interesting posts :-)
Good luck !