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  Subject: Stylus Studio 10 activation fails because of wrong browser version
Author: daniel W.
Date: 29 Oct 2009 06:45 AM
Originally Posted: 28 Oct 2009 08:38 AM
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Hi,
I was not able to activate my stylus studio 10 in the office.
I get the following error message:
"Stylus Studio is currently unable to contact the server to verify the status of your license. You can use ....
I/O error: We experienced an error trying to connect to our server:
Encounteredd an I/O error in URL "http://www.stylussutdio.com/activate":
Forbidden
Please try submitting your registration/activation key later"
An analysis of the wireshark capture trace running on my PC (see below) shows that the company firewall solution checks the Internet Browser version. If it detects an old version of a browser then the access is forbidden.
Stylus studio 10 activation is based on http and (probably) mimics an old browser.
Is there a patch or a workaround for this issue?
Thanks and best regards
Daniel
No. Time Source Destination Protocol Info
48 4.747151 172.31.34.17 172.31.34.45 HTTP HTTP/1.0 403 Forbidden (text/html)
Frame 48 (264 bytes on wire, 264 bytes captured)
Ethernet II, Src: HewlettP_ff:84:b1 (00:0e:7f:ff:84:b1), Dst: Dell_df:b9:d9 (00:1a:a0:df:b9:d9)
Internet Protocol, Src: 172.31.34.17 (172.31.34.17), Dst: 172.31.34.45 (172.31.34.45)
Transmission Control Protocol, Src Port: http-alt (8080), Dst Port: mentaclient (2117), Seq: 1461, Ack: 898, Len: 210
Source port: http-alt (8080)
Destination port: mentaclient (2117)
[Stream index: 8]
Sequence number: 1461 (relative sequence number)
[Next sequence number: 1671 (relative sequence number)]
Acknowledgement number: 898 (relative ack number)
Header length: 20 bytes
Flags: 0x18 (PSH, ACK)
Window size: 7176
Checksum: 0x647a [validation disabled]
[SEQ/ACK analysis]
TCP segment data (210 bytes)
[Reassembled TCP Segments (1670 bytes): #47(1460), #48(210)]
Hypertext Transfer Protocol
HTTP/1.0 403 Forbidden\r\n
[Expert Info (Chat/Sequence): HTTP/1.0 403 Forbidden\r\n]
Request Version: HTTP/1.0
Response Code: 403
Server: squid/2.6.STABLE21\r\n
Date: Wed, 28 Oct 2009 11:58:37 GMT\r\n
Content-Type: text/html\r\n
Content-Length: 1282\r\n
Expires: Wed, 28 Oct 2009 11:58:37 GMT\r\n
X-Squid-Error: ERR_BAD_BROWSER 0\r\n
X-Cache: MISS from proxy.ch.xxxx.net\r\n
X-Cache-Lookup: NONE from proxy.ch.xxxx.net:8080\r\n
Via: 1.0 proxy.ch.keymile.net:8080 (squid/2.6.STABLE21)\r\n
Proxy-Connection: close\r\n
\r\n
Line-based text data: text/html
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">\n
<HTML><HEAD><META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">\n
<TITLE>ERROR: This browser is not allowed to access the Internet</TITLE>\n
<STYLE type="text/css"><!--BODY{background-color:#ffffff;font-family:verdana,sans-serif}PRE{font-family:sans-serif}--></STYLE>\n
</HEAD><BODY>\n
<H1>ERROR</H1>\n
<H2>Your Browser or Browser version is not allowed to access this service</H2>\n
<HR noshade size="1px">\n
<P>\n
While trying to retrieve the URL:\n
<A HREF="http://www.stylusstudio.com/activate/">">">http://www.stylusstudio.com/activate/</A>\n</a></a><br></a></a><br>
<P>\n<br><br>
The following error was encountered:\n<br><br>
<UL>\n<br><br>
<LI>\n<br><br>
<STRONG>\n<br><br>
Access Denied.\n<br><br>
</STRONG>\n<br><br>
<P>\n<br><br>
Only recent versions of Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer are allowed to use the xxxx proxy service.\n<br><br>
To update your browser to the most recent version please contact IT:</p>\n<br><br>
\n<br><br>
<a href="<a rel="nofollow" href="<a rel="nofollow" href="http://helpdesk.de.xxx.net/hd5/index.php?d=it&c=@1">">">http://helpdesk.de.xxx.net/hd5/index.php?d=it&c=@1"></a>">">http://helpdesk.de.xxx.net/hd5/index.php?d=it&c=@1">"><a rel="nofollow" href="http://helpdesk.de.xxx.net/hd5/index.php?d=it&c=@1"></a></a>">">http://helpdesk.de.xxx.net/hd5/index.php?d=it&c=@1"></a></a></a> IT Helpdesk </a>\n<br><br>
\n<br><br>
<hr>\n<br><br>
<P>Your cache administrator is <A HREF="mailto:c.m@ke.com">c.m@ke.com</A>. </P>\n<br><br>
\n<br><br>
\n<br><br>
<BR clear="all">\n<br><br>
<HR noshade size="1px">\n<br><br>
<ADDRESS>\n<br><br>
Generated Wed, 28 Oct 2009 11:58:37 GMT by proxy.ch.keymile.net (squid/2.6.STABLE21)\n<br><br>
</ADDRESS>\n<br><br>
</BODY></HTML>\n<br><br>
 activation_error.png
activation error screenshot
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Subject: Stylus Studio 10 activation fails because of wrong browser version
Author: daniel W.
Date: 30 Oct 2009 03:20 AM
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Dear Alberto,
I'll try to ask the IT deparment to allow the activation. What would help me a lot if you could tell me how often StylusStudio "checks" the activation server. Only once at installation time? If so then I think it is easier to argument with them.
In the long term it is unfortuantly not so simple. The IT logic goes like this:
- browsers in general are unsafe and have security wholes
- by checking for each http request if an up-todate browser is used they can ensure that no PC can get infected from a malicous website because of a browser which is not up-to-date
- this is done with a product called esafe (http://www.aladdin.com/eSafe/) which checks the content. If the user agent does not match what IT-policy allows then it rejectes the packet:
I checks (probably) the User-Agent field in the http protocol
which returns:
User-Agent: Stylus Studio - *the* XML IDE\r\n
When I use my web browser I get the following
User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 3.0.4506.2152; .NET CLR 3.5.30729)\r\n
Is it possible to "fake" the user agent for Activation (i.e. registery entry) or to improve the mechanism with future stylus studio version?
Regards
Daniel
==============================================================
== Stylus studio activation ==================================
Hypertext Transfer Protocol
POST http://www.stylusstudio.com/activate/ HTTP/1.1\r\n
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded\r\n
Content-Length: 294\r\n
User-Agent: Stylus Studio - *the* XML IDE\r\n
Host: www.stylusstudio.com\r\n
Proxy-Connection: Keep-Alive\r\n
Pragma: no-cache\r\n
== web browser ==============================================
Hypertext Transfer Protocol
Hypertext Transfer Protocol
GET http://www.bluewin.ch/ HTTP/1.1\r\n
[truncated] Accept: image/gif, image/x-xbitmap, image/jpeg, image/pjpeg, application/x-shockwave-flash, application/vnd.ms-excel, application/vnd.ms-powerpoint, application/msword, application/x-ms-application, application/x-ms-xbap, appli
Accept-Language: de-ch\r\n
UA-CPU: x86\r\n
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate\r\n
User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 3.0.4506.2152; .NET CLR 3.5.30729)\r\n
Host: www.bluewin.ch\r\n
Proxy-Connection: Keep-Alive\r\n
[truncated] Cookie: CP=null*; jqCookieJar_WidgetBox_Config_DE=%7B%22WidgetBox_Config_DE%22%3A%7B%22MET%22%3A%7B%22o%22%3A1%2C%22s%22%3A%2206660000%22%7D%2C%22NAC%22%3A%7B%22o%22%3A1%2C%22s%22%3A%22PB%22%7D%2C%22RAD%22%3A%7B%22o%22%3A0%2C%2
Proxy-Authorization: Basic Z3dlYmVkOkRhbl8zMDk3Kw==\r\n
\r\n
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  Subject: Stylus Studio 10 activation fails because of wrong browser version
Author: (Deleted User)
Date: 30 Oct 2009 03:38 AM
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Hi Daniel,
Stylus Studio needs to contact the server just once, to perform the check on the activation key provided (btw, Stylus should be run by an administrator when doing this, or the result of the operation will not be properly stored in the registry).
During the normal usage of Stylus, it can check if an updated version is available, but this can be stopped via an option.
However, if you try to load files from the web (either using FTP or HTTP), the same problem will be present.
As for using a different user agent, that has at least two problems: a) we would be stating something false b) if your software periodically deprecates old versions of the leading browsers, the problem will reoccur again.
Alberto
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