Using http...

hi! Again my curiosity encouraged me to ask for some help, this time i m intrusted in knowing about http.1st of all what is http(hyper text transfer protocol...?) and for what purpose it is used for. From my previous post about telnet, i came to know that a hacker can connect to a system at http port (80) no matter whether he/she has a username and password for login. I wonder if it is really true. if it is than would anyone explain it to me. i m using win98 (default user) and no firewall installed. hope for some good response.

to learn about http visit http://www.silurian.org/sitevigil/HTTP.htm
or refer to RFC 2616 for it

http or HyperText Transfer Protocol is a common service we all know as a website..

evrytime you see in your browser http:// you know you browser is connecting to port 80

http://searchsystemsmanagement.techt...214004,00.html

In simplest of terms it is the protocol used to transfer html pages from a webserver to your browser. Also, to follow up on what has already been said, it runs on TCP port 80.

It defaults to port 80. You can run a webserver on any port you like.

At the end of a URL if there is a ":XXX", the XXX is the non-standard port number.

An example:

Below I am using the netcat telnet app by mudge of l0pht to connect to www.goolge.com on port 80. I want to get the root document (or /) so I GET /. the HTTP/1.1 specifies the version of the HTTP language that I wish to use. HTTP/1.1 format includes a host name so as to support virtual servers (websites that do not have their own IP address but share on with other sites). I finish up with 2 carrige return line feeds (Returns) to tell the server that I have finished requesting data.

Code:

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E:\WINNT>nc www.google.com 80
GET / HTTP/1.1
HOST:www.google.com

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2002 20:50:29 GMT
Content-Length: 2532
Content-Type: text/html
Cache-Control: private
Server: GWS/2.0
..Truncated...

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Google sends back HTML (hypertext markup language) that is converted by your browser into what you see on screen.

If you can get to a web page via a web browser without a password you can also get to it via Telnet.

If you want to include passwords into the connection string below the this is done by converting it into Base64 and appending it to the url in the format user:pass@host. You can also use this method to post data to forms, send and recieve email, even IRC if you know the syntax of the language (eg HTTP SMTP POP3 etc). All of the languages spoken on the net are documented here.

Happy research! Hope that helps =]