Automater version 2.1 released - Proxy capabilities and a little user-agent modification
Wednesday, June 18, 2014 at 10:55AM It has been a little while since some of our posts on Automater and its capabilities. However, we haven't stopped moving forward on the concept and are proud to announce that Automater has been included in the latest release of REMnux and also made the cut for ToolsWatch. Of course, you should get your copy from our GitHub repo since we'll be updating GitHub just prior to getting the updates to other repositories. Okay, enough back-patting and proverbial "glad handing", we are excited to let everyone know that Automater has a new user-agent output that is configurable by the user and now fully supports proxy-based requests and submissions! Thanks go out to nullprobe for taking interest in the code and pushing us forward on getting the proxy capability completed. Although we didn't use the exact submission he provided, we definitely used some code and ideas he provided. Thanks again nullprobe!
The New Stuff
Okay, for a quick review of some of the old posts if you're new to Automater, or need to refresh yourself with the product, please go here, here, and here to read about Automater its capabilities and extensibility as well as output format etc... As you probably know, Automater is an extensible OSINT tool that has quite a few capabilities. To get straight to the point, Automater can now be run with new command-line tags to enable proxy functionality and to change the user-agent submitted in the header of the web requests made from the tool.
User-Agent Changes
Prior to this upgrade, the Automater sent a default user-agent string based on the browser settings on the device hosting the application. While this is probably fine, it just......well.....wasn't good enough for us. By default, the Automater now sends the user-agent string of 'Automater/2.1' with requests and posts (if post submissions are required). However, you now have the ability to change that user-agent string to one of your liking by using the command-line parameter or -a or --agent followed by the string you'd like to use. A new Automater execution line using this new option would look something like:
python Automater.py 1.1.1.1 -a MyUserAgent/1.0
or some such thing that you'd like to send as a user-agent string in the header.
Proxy Capabilities
A significant modification in this version was the inclusion of a capability to utilize a network proxy system. To enable this functionality, all that is needed is the command line argument --proxy followed by the address and the port the proxy device is listening on during Automater execution. For instance, if my network proxy is at IP address 10.1.1.1 and is listening on port 8080 I would execute the Automater by typing:
python Automater.py 1.1.1.1 --proxy 10.1.1.1:8080
of course, your system will utilize standard DNS resolution practices if you only know the name of your network proxy and resolve the IP address automatically. So, if the proxy is known as proxy.company.com listening on port 8080, you would type:
python Automater.py 1.1.1.1 --proxy proxy.company.com:8080
it's as simple as that!
Further Movement
We are still working on other submissions and requests, so please keep them coming as we will continue to upgrade as we get requests as well as when we find more efficient ways to do things. We appreciate the support and would love to answer any questions you may have, so give us a yell if you need anything.
p4r4n0y1ng and 1aN0rmus.....OUT!
