Developing a Cloaker: Would love to hear your ideas

[internetsway]

Well hello BHW, just noticed I had this account from 2015, which I haven't used since then.
A lot of things have changed and I am now a software developer, specialized in Cyber Security.
Currently, I am working on a Cloaker, which I might sell on here. Of course it should be an outstanding and great product.

That is why I wanted to ask you guys: Are there any 'special features' you always wanted to see in a Cloaker? Any must haves?
I am not new to cloaking, but so far I only used my private cloakers for my private projects.
Big databases with IPs of datacenter, VPNs, public proxies, blacklisted IPs, IPs owned by companies, User-Agents of bots and much more are 'in my posession'.

So far my idea would be to provide a cloaking API that will receive all of the required information about the client trying to access the cloaked page (screen resolution, IP, User-Agent, JavaScript check) and then decide, based on the data I have saved, whether it should be redirected to a 'safe page' (i.e. google.com) or to the cloaked page. Would provide my clients with PHP, JavaScript, Python and so on that they could integrate into their webapp in order to make use of my cloaker.

Any Input would be much appreciated and I hope that I will be able to release, sell and satisfy people on here with my cloaker!

 

[itz_styx]

depends what kind of cloaker you want to develope. for SEO (so search engine bots), or ad networks like facebook/adwords etc. or both?

 

[internetsway]

depends what kind of cloaker you want to develope. for SEO (so search engine bots), or ad networks like facebook/adwords etc. or both?

Definitely both. Forgot to mention, people will have the option to choose and filter precisely what they want to have blocked and what not. Thanks for your input, appreciate it!

 

[99lives]

Have you checkd what's on the market right now?

 

[internetsway]

Have you checkd what's on the market right now?

Yes, I have. My private cloaker has existed for quite a while now and it has pretty much all the basic features a cloaker would need. It is just that I want to release something different and outstanding, so any ideas would be welcome. If there is anything people miss in cloakers that are currently on the market, no matter what it is, I would implement into mine. Thanks for the input!

 

[Fullbring]

I have heard of cloaker before but not quite sure what they are for exactly when it comes to as mentioned previously, ad network.
Is it to allow you to create ads for banned niche like gambling etc on adwords and fb by showing them a different website when they check your website in order to decide if your ad should be approved or not?

 

[internetsway]

I have heard of cloaker before but not quite sure what they are for exactly when it comes to as mentioned previously, ad network.
Is it to allow you to create ads for banned niche like gambling etc on adwords and fb by showing them a different website when they check your website in order to decide if your ad should be approved or not?

A cloaker lets you kind of 'control' traffic to your site. You are right, it could for instance be used to hide the true content of a website, when it is required, like banned niches etc. It can also be used to disallow 'bad ips', like Tor Exit-Nodes or VPNs, Datacenter IPs, because they are likely automated scripts and much more. Most cloakers, including mine, also have the ability to only allow certain countries or disallow certain countries.

Even though this is not a common features for cloakers, at least from what I've seen, I also built a WAF (= Web Application Firewall) into mine, in order to detect and prevent hacking attempts. But this is probably just due to the fact that I work in CyberSec and always want everything super secure ^^ Thanks for posting on here and if you can think of any features you would like to see in my cloaker in the future, I would love to hear them!

 

[Kanedamax]

Honestly? I'm surprised no cloaker has any type of canvas fingerprint detection

 

[internetsway]

Honestly? I'm surprised no cloaker has any type of canvas fingerprint detection

Have a canvasblocker in my browser, but never thought of that. Great idea, it's now on my development list, thanks a lot for the input Kanedamax!

 

[99lives]

Well, this is my opinion, having used (now extinct) wp.plugin, one time fee cloaker and a SaaS, very expensive one:
1. You either sell to noobs or you don't. If you do, you'll get a lot of questions, because they are just learning. If you do, you can get as many clientes.
2. Provide good customer support
3. If you decide to be in the mid-low price range, for lord's sake don't make it one-time payment. Make it yearly, so you don't have to worry about constantly getting new clients and you have an incentive to constantly improve.
4. Cloakers for google ads have to be súper advanced, cloakers for an instagram profile link, don't (I have my own for the last one, a few lines of code, has been working for years).
5. Provide good customer support.
6. Explain the implications of activating a feature. IE: "if you enable *never redirect if mouse not installed* you will have more false positves, approximately 10%.

 

[plastio]

Hi,
If you consider open source part of the modules those that aren't core related to the filtering logic of course, I would be more then glad to contribute,
did you think about the architecture yet and the tech stack that you will build on top ?

 

[ranchito]

So good, thanks for sharing

 

[Grudge]

So good, thanks for sharing

What did you like from this post in particular?

 

[IGWizzard]

Well hello BHW, just noticed I had this account from 2015, which I haven't used since then.
A lot of things have changed and I am now a software developer, specialized in Cyber Security.
Currently, I am working on a Cloaker, which I might sell on here. Of course it should be an outstanding and great product.

That is why I wanted to ask you guys: Are there any 'special features' you always wanted to see in a Cloaker? Any must haves?
I am not new to cloaking, but so far I only used my private cloakers for my private projects.
Big databases with IPs of datacenter, VPNs, public proxies, blacklisted IPs, IPs owned by companies, User-Agents of bots and much more are 'in my posession'.

So far my idea would be to provide a cloaking API that will receive all of the required information about the client trying to access the cloaked page (screen resolution, IP, User-Agent, JavaScript check) and then decide, based on the data I have saved, whether it should be redirected to a 'safe page' (i.e. google.com) or to the cloaked page. Would provide my clients with PHP, JavaScript, Python and so on that they could integrate into their webapp in order to make use of my cloaker.

Any Input would be much appreciated and I hope that I will be able to release, sell and satisfy people on here with my cloaker!

You can test the cloaker against f.vision to develop it better (not sure if it's doable, don't know the debugging part, just know what's doing a cloacker )

 

[internetsway]

Well, this is my opinion, having used (now extinct) wp.plugin, one time fee cloaker and a SaaS, very expensive one:
1. You either sell to noobs or you don't. If you do, you'll get a lot of questions, because they are just learning. If you do, you can get as many clientes.
2. Provide good customer support
3. If you decide to be in the mid-low price range, for lord's sake don't make it one-time payment. Make it yearly, so you don't have to worry about constantly getting new clients and you have an incentive to constantly improve.
4. Cloakers for google ads have to be súper advanced, cloakers for an instagram profile link, don't (I have my own for the last one, a few lines of code, has been working for years).
5. Provide good customer support.
6. Explain the implications of activating a feature. IE: "if you enable *never redirect if mouse not installed* you will have more false positves, approximately 10%.

Thanks for all your input, this helps a lot! I would definitely use monthly payments, maybe also 3 month or 1 year payments. I have seen lots of software die just because they had lifetime licenses in the beginning. If you pay for a cloaker you usually make a lot more money off of it than it costs, so it should be worth it to pay monthly for it. I think I would be able to cloak IG and adwords, would test it myself and have some other people testing it as well, so that the cloaker actually does what it promises.

For the customer support, as I would develop the cloaker with a partner of mine, who would do all the design stuff, we would both use a telegram, skype and discord for support. People could then reach out to us and have an instant answer in most cases, as even when we go grocery shopping or something, we would get a notification. And yes, explaining the implications is a great idea! This will prevent a lot of mistakes from people that are not really into it.

Thanks for all the input, I highly appreciate that!

If you consider open source part of the modules those that aren't core related to the filtering logic of course, I would be more then glad to contribute,
did you think about the architecture yet and the tech stack that you will build on top ?

I will not make it open source. I love open source, but I think it will not be suitable for a project like this. About the tech stack, I will probably improve my GO API and have some type of load balancing in front, which chooses the closest servers -> like a small CDN. Multiple servers will be running at all times, in order to prevent any downtime, as this would cost my clients money. I also though of some 'secret servers' that only get activated, should the others get DDoSed. Thanks for your input!

You can test the cloaker against http://www.f.vision/ to develop it better (not sure if it's doable, don't know the debugging part, just know what's doing a cloacker )

Thank you! I will probably test it against multiple sites, have some type of error detection running on one of my screens 24/7, so that when an IP that should not get onto the site still does get access, I can take action immediately.