On Mon, 3 Dec 2001, David Cantrell wrote: > On Mon, Dec 03, 2001 at 04:38:04PM +0000, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > I reckon it ought to be fairly easy to identify a web server based > > on error messages and details of responses. > > > > Is there any software out there that already does this, or evidence > > as to why it would be impractical? > > It's impractical. google for apache errordocument. Depends how much precision he needs though -- I don't have any statistics, but it seems like most sites don't bother changing the default error doc pages, so while it isn't a 100% reliable check by a long shot, it can be one of several strong indicators (along with http headers).
Amusingly, when encountering an error, Internet Explorer checks to see if the response is longer than some byte length, I think maybe 512 or 1024. If it's shorter, then IE assumes the default hasn't changed and provides it's not-very-much-more-helpful one instead. Lesson: if you're going to customize your error pages -- and you should -- then make sure the main returned html document is at least 1k long... -- Chris Devers "People with machines that think, will in times of crisis, make up stuff and attribute it to me" - "Nikla-nostra-debo"
