DOS ain't dead - cloudflare and old web browsers

RayeR

CZ,
11.11.2025, 15:00

cloudflare and old web browsers (Users)

Hi, it seems that websites are becoming plagued by cloudflare and similar human checks (to avoid excesive AI bots crawling that may cause DDoS) but this crap prevets browsing via older browsers. Recently I have found that e.g. theretroweb.com, that is very usefull for me and I visit it quite often, started using it too. Despite the "retro" in domain name I cannot longer browse it via retro Mozilla Seamonkey and even not via MyPal 68, only Chrome 360 and Supermium/Thorium works on WinXP. I didn't tried under DOS links/arachne yet but I doubt it would work. Could some web proxy work? Or what other solution do you use (don't need to write use linux or w11, I know)? What would be needed implemented as minimum in a dos browser to pass the check?

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DOS gives me freedom to unlimited HW access.

bencollver

11.11.2025, 16:46

@ RayeR

cloudflare and old web browsers

Post reply

> Or what other solution do you use (don't need to write use linux or w11, I
> know)? What would be needed implemented as minimum in a dos browser to pass
> the check?

Personally when i see a clownflare challenge, i close my browser tab. It's not much of a solution, but it's where i am at.

Recently Total Hardware 1999 went up on gopher, which you can browse with lynx on DOS.

gopher://bitreich.org/1/th99/

RayeR

CZ,
11.11.2025, 17:49

@ bencollver

cloudflare and old web browsers

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> Personally when i see a clownflare challenge, i close my browser tab. It's
> not much of a solution, but it's where i am at.

But I guess this plague will spread at almost websites around so not up to date browsers would remain not much for browsing...

> Recently Total Hardware 1999 went up on gopher, which you can browse with
> lynx on DOS.
> gopher://bitreich.org/1/th99/

Heh gopher, I heard this nostalgic word last somewhere in '90 but I never used it. I connected to BBS before Internet became available in our country and then just jumped to WWW/FTP/telnet...

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DOS gives me freedom to unlimited HW access.

roytam 12.11.2025, 04:06 @ RayeR	cloudflare and old web browsers Post reply
	BTW I think you missed my browser builds.

RayeR

CZ,
12.11.2025, 15:20

@ roytam

cloudflare and old web browsers

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I know you have a lot of browser builds on yoyr site. Which one is cloudflare compatible? I guess that Mypal68 is based on newer core than your builds. But what about dos browsers?

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DOS gives me freedom to unlimited HW access.

roytam

12.11.2025, 16:02
(edited by roytam, 12.11.2025, 16:56)

@ RayeR

cloudflare and old web browsers

Post reply

> I know you have a lot of browser builds on yoyr site. Which one is
> cloudflare compatible? I guess that Mypal68 is based on newer core than
> your builds. But what about dos browsers?

my latest UXP based browser builds should work against cloudflare's captcha. (you may need to turn on firefox compatibility in options dialog as well)
mypal68(or 78 as he updated its kernel) may not cater enough of cloudflare's requirements. (I didn't well testing it these days)

and for DOS browsers, I think neither cloudflare nor google care about them (including but not limit to lynx/w3m/links/dillo/etc.)

RayeR

CZ,
12.11.2025, 22:08

@ roytam

cloudflare and old web browsers

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OK, I'll have a look. Also thanks for info about mypal update.

Does cloucrap take a care about browser user agent or other method of detection or does it behave the same way for all?

I'm just thinking if it would be possible to implement on server side some kind of whitelist/exception e.g. for registered users (that would be appproved they are not bots and don't DDossing the server). Such user then could have e.g. some specific hash code in user agent that will be accepted by server automatically without captcha. It makes sense just for some small set of often visited servers, like theretroweb in my case...

I hope cloudcrap will not appear here too :P

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DOS gives me freedom to unlimited HW access.

roytam 13.11.2025, 00:31 @ RayeR	cloudflare and old web browsers Post reply
	> Does cloucrap take a care about browser user agent or other method of > detection or does it behave the same way for all? yeah it cares about user agent string too. and js and css are also cared as well.

RayeR

CZ,
13.11.2025, 04:59

@ roytam

cloudflare and old web browsers

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Dejavu? Seems that https://theretroweb.com removed cloudflare now...

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DOS gives me freedom to unlimited HW access.

Berlin, Germany,
13.11.2025, 07:01

@ RayeR

cloudflare and old web browsers

Post reply

> I hope cloudcrap will not appear here too :P

Let me think about… NO! :-D

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