Overhaul the usage of libcurl-impersonate

libcurl-impersonate was not being used properly, as the code was
overriding the headers set by it to prevent detection.

- update the libcurl-impersonate to an actively managed lexiforest
  fork
- impersonate Chrome 131
- move the defaultHttpHeaders to http.php, where it belongs
- only set defaultHttpHeaders if curl-impersonate is not detected
- make useragent ini setting optional and disabled by default
- add necessary documentation updates

Author: wrobelda

Dockerfile

@@ -25,36 +25,39 @@ RUN set -xe && \
       # php-zlib is enabled by default with PHP 8.2 in Debian 12
       # for downloading libcurl-impersonate
       curl \
+      # for patching libcurl-impersonate
+      patchelf \
       && \
     # install curl-impersonate library
-    curlimpersonate_version=0.6.0 && \
+    curlimpersonate_version=1.0.0rc2 && \
     { \
         { \
             [ $(arch) = 'aarch64' ] && \
             archive="libcurl-impersonate-v${curlimpersonate_version}.aarch64-linux-gnu.tar.gz" && \
-            sha512sum="d04b1eabe71f3af06aa1ce99b39a49c5e1d33b636acedcd9fad163bc58156af5c3eb3f75aa706f335515791f7b9c7a6c40ffdfa47430796483ecef929abd905d" \
+            sha512sum="c8add80e7a0430a074edea1a11f73d03044c48e848e164af2d6f362866623e29bede207a50f18f95b1bc5ab3d33f5c31408be60a6da66b74a0d176eebe299116" \
         ; } \
         || { \
             [ $(arch) = 'armv7l' ] && \
             archive="libcurl-impersonate-v${curlimpersonate_version}.arm-linux-gnueabihf.tar.gz" && \
-            sha512sum="05906b4efa1a6ed8f3b716fd83d476b6eea6bfc68e3dbc5212d65a2962dcaa7bd1f938c9096a7535252b11d1d08fb93adccc633585ff8cb8cec5e58bfe969bc9" \
+            sha512sum="d0403ca4ad55a8d499b120e5675c7b5a0dc4946af49c933e91fc24455ffe5e122aa21ee95554612ff5d1bd6faea1556e1e1b9c821918e2644cc9bcbddc05747a" \
         ; } \
         || { \
             [ $(arch) = 'x86_64' ] && \
             archive="libcurl-impersonate-v${curlimpersonate_version}.x86_64-linux-gnu.tar.gz" && \
-            sha512sum="480bbe9452cd9aff2c0daaaf91f1057b3a96385f79011628a9237223757a9b0d090c59cb5982dc54ea0d07191657299ea91ca170a25ced3d7d410fcdff130ace" \
+            sha512sum="35cafda2b96df3218a6d8545e0947a899837ede51c90f7ef2980bd2d99dbd67199bc620000df28b186727300b8c7046d506807fb48ee0fbc068dc8ae01986339" \
         ; } \
     } && \
-    curl -LO "https://github.com/lwthiker/curl-impersonate/releases/download/v${curlimpersonate_version}/${archive}" && \
+    curl -LO "https://github.com/lexiforest/curl-impersonate/releases/download/v${curlimpersonate_version}/${archive}" && \
     echo "$sha512sum  $archive" | sha512sum -c - && \
     mkdir -p /usr/local/lib/curl-impersonate && \
-    tar xaf "$archive" -C /usr/local/lib/curl-impersonate --wildcards 'libcurl-impersonate-ff.so*' && \
+    tar xaf "$archive" -C /usr/local/lib/curl-impersonate && \
+    patchelf --set-soname libcurl.so.4 /usr/local/lib/curl-impersonate/libcurl-impersonate.so && \
     rm "$archive" && \
-    apt-get purge --assume-yes curl && \
+    apt-get purge --assume-yes curl patchelf && \
     rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*
 
-ENV LD_PRELOAD /usr/local/lib/curl-impersonate/libcurl-impersonate-ff.so
-ENV CURL_IMPERSONATE ff91esr
+ENV LD_PRELOAD /usr/local/lib/curl-impersonate/libcurl-impersonate.so
+ENV CURL_IMPERSONATE chrome131
 
 # logs should go to stdout / stderr
 RUN ln -sfT /dev/stderr /var/log/nginx/error.log; \

config.default.ini.php

@@ -53,7 +53,10 @@
 retries = 1
 
 ; Curl user agent
-useragent = "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:102.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/102.0"
+; This is already set by curl-impersonate, which comes included as default 
+; in RSS-Bridge docker container. Use only if you know what you're doing.
+; For reference, see https://github.com/lexiforest/curl-impersonate/tree/main/docs
+;useragent = "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:102.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/102.0"
 
 ; Max http response size in MB
 max_filesize = 20

docs/03_For_Hosts/08_Custom_Configuration.md

@@ -119,7 +119,9 @@ Default network timeout.
 
 ### useragent
 
-Default user agent.
+Overrides the user agent value. Note that the default value, together with a set of other detection-preventing options is set
+automatically by the [libcurl-impersonate](https://github.com/lexiforest/curl-impersonate), which is used by the default Docker container distributed together with RSS-Bridge. Use only if you know what you're doing, otherwise you may stop libcurl-impersonate
+from doing its job impersonating real browser.
 
 ## Authentication
 

docs/09_Technical_recommendations/index.md

@@ -3,7 +3,7 @@
 ## Test a site before building a bridge
 
 Some sites make use of anti-bot mechanisms (e.g.: by using JavaScript) in which case they work fine in regular browsers,
-but not in the PHP environment.
+but not in the PHP environment. RSS-Bridge Docker container by default resorts to using libcurl-impersonate, which helps mitigating anti-bot mechanisms.
 
 To check if a site works with RSS-Bridge, create a new bridge using the 
 [template](../05_Bridge_API/02_BridgeAbstract.md#template)

lib/contents.php

@@ -64,19 +64,7 @@ function getContents(
         }
     }
 
-    // Snagged from https://github.com/lwthiker/curl-impersonate/blob/main/firefox/curl_ff102
-    $defaultHttpHeaders = [
-        'Accept' => 'text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,image/avif,image/webp,*/*;q=0.8',
-        'Accept-Language' => 'en-US,en;q=0.5',
-        'Upgrade-Insecure-Requests' => '1',
-        'Sec-Fetch-Dest' => 'document',
-        'Sec-Fetch-Mode' => 'navigate',
-        'Sec-Fetch-Site' => 'none',
-        'Sec-Fetch-User' => '?1',
-        'TE' => 'trailers',
-    ];
-
-    $config['headers'] = array_merge($defaultHttpHeaders, $httpHeadersNormalized);
+    $config['headers'] = $httpHeadersNormalized;
 
     $maxFileSize = Configuration::getConfig('http', 'max_filesize');
     if ($maxFileSize) {

lib/http.php

@@ -66,6 +66,8 @@ final class CurlHttpClient implements HttpClient
 {
     public function request(string $url, array $config = []): Response
     {
+        $ch = curl_init($url);
+
         $defaults = [
             'useragent' => null,
             'timeout' => 5,
@@ -77,13 +79,27 @@ public function request(string $url, array $config = []): Response
             'max_filesize' => null,
             'max_redirections' => 5,
         ];
+
+        // if curl-impersonate is not detected, use some basic defaults
+        if (curl_version()['ssl_version'] != 'BoringSSL') {
+            // Snagged from https://github.com/lwthiker/curl-impersonate/blob/main/firefox/curl_ff102
+            $defaults['headers'] = [
+                'Accept' => 'text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,image/avif,image/webp,*/*;q=0.8',
+                'Accept-Language' => 'en-US,en;q=0.5',
+                'Upgrade-Insecure-Requests' => '1',
+                'Sec-Fetch-Dest' => 'document',
+                'Sec-Fetch-Mode' => 'navigate',
+                'Sec-Fetch-Site' => 'none',
+                'Sec-Fetch-User' => '?1',
+                'TE' => 'trailers',
+            ];
+            $defaults['useragent'] = 'Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:102.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/102.0';
+
+            curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, false);
+        }
+
         $config = array_merge($defaults, $config);
 
-        $ch = curl_init($url);
-        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
-        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, true);
-        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_MAXREDIRS, $config['max_redirections']);
-        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, false);
         $httpHeaders = [];
         foreach ($config['headers'] as $name => $value) {
             $httpHeaders[] = sprintf('%s: %s', $name, $value);
@@ -92,6 +108,9 @@ public function request(string $url, array $config = []): Response
         if ($config['useragent']) {
             curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, $config['useragent']);
         }
+        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
+        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, true);
+        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_MAXREDIRS, $config['max_redirections']);
         curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, $config['timeout']);
         curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_ENCODING, '');
         curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_PROTOCOLS, CURLPROTO_HTTP | CURLPROTO_HTTPS);