HBH Basic Web 3: Switch User Agent

In Basic Web Hacking mission 3, there is a problem which is quite difficult to overcome unless you’ve read about it before and know what it is about.

Now, Drake learned how to make http user agents with php.
Wrong user_agent, bwh3_user_agent wasn’t found

From the mission description, you can discern that Drake uses PHP, a server-side scripting language, to check what your user agent is. The user agent is the browser that you are currently using. In your case, your user agent is: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.12) Gecko/20080201 Firefox/2.0.0.12 (this value was produced with the PHP variable $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT']). Changing your user agent is trivial, if you have the right tools, that is. I recommend using Firefox, which is faster and more secure than Internet Explorer.

<!–
google_ad_client = “pub-2303908469917611″;google_ad_width = 468;google_ad_height = 60;google_ad_format = “468×60_as_rimg”;google_cpa_choice = “CAAQ9eOTlwIaCN₂K₁NgLkVQQKNO₁₉3M”;google_ad_channel = “3690139778″;
//–>

When you have downloaded Firefox, you can use the extension called User Agent Switcher to spoof the data that the web brower is sending and make the server think that you are using another user agent. In this case, we understand from the error message given in the mission (Wrong user_agent, bwh3_user_agent wasn’t found) that a user_agent called bwh3_user_agent (Basic Web Hacking 3 user_agent) is required.

To accomplish this, just open User Agent Switcher and create another user_agent with the browser name “bwh3_user_agent” and refresh the page. If it doesn’t work, try refreshing this page to see what your new user agent’s name is.