Browsing the web on 98/ME in 2019 and beyond

[schwups]

12.18 is newer than 12.50 ( September2012). It wasn't an official release, it is a next or snapshot. Everyone could download these versions on Opera.arc / ftp. It will also run on your system, Dave. You must use Proxy server configuration, otherwise you get the internal communication error on 98/ME. The version number was probably an inattention of the programmer. It should be 12.05!

and one more picture - Firefox 35 TLS 1.3

 

Edited August 25, 2022 by schwups

[Dave-H]

OK, I finally managed to get the PortSwigger certificate installed into Opera 12.02 correctly!
The secret was to put the .der extension onto the DER format exported file, and to drag and drop it into Opera's certificate window.
Thanks everyone!

I have now deleted all those manual certificate approvals I did, and I'm not seeing them any more.
The TLS 1.3 test now shows as correct!

However, the Trend Micro site now looks worse than it did before, its text is all bunched up, and no images are showing.
No certificate errors, but if I try to download the pattern file, nothing happens except a permanent waiting indication.

I'm getting strings of "Failed to allocate memory - behavior may be unstable" messages in the Burp console.

Edited July 25, 2020 by Dave-H
Amendment

[Wunderbar98]

Hi Dave-H. Your inputs in this thread are appreciated, probably all the same questions and barriers i would have trying to get TLS v1.3 running. Just an FYI, the primary site you were having problems with in old Opera loads fine using RetroZilla. I'm just running the basic RZ install, not the @roytam1 version at the moment. The Conventional Consumer Pattern 16.123.50 file downloads fine too, without JavaScript. Maybe i just hit a lucky (old) server, anyway works fine.
https://downloadcenter.trendmicro.com/index.php?clk=tab_pattern&clkval=33&regs=nabu

[schwups]

2 hours ago, Dave-H said:

However, the Trend Micro site now looks worse than it did before, its text is all bunched up, and no images are showing.
No certificate errors, but if I try to download the pattern file, nothing happens except a permanent waiting indication.

I'm getting strings of "Failed to allocate memory - behavior may be unstable" messages in the Burp console.

The same here, my whole system slows down. I couldn't close Burp, so I used the task manager to close it. Without proxy the site loaded fast and I think it looks well. Firefox35/Javascript enabled

[loblo]

{
    "project_options":{
        "http":{
            "streaming_responses":{
                "scope_advanced_mode":true,
                "store":false,
                "strip_chunked_encoding_metadata":false,
                "urls":[
                    {
                        "enabled":true,
                        "file":"^.*.exe|.zip|.7z|.rar|.tar|.iso|.mp3|.mp4|.flac.*",
                        "protocol":"any"
                    }
                ]
            }
        }
    }
}

Save this as a json file and import it in Project Options > HTTP > Streaming Responses, it should take care of your zip download issue as well as that of a number of other potentially too big files of other types and easy enough to add some more if needed.

Edited July 26, 2020 by loblo

[schwups]

Test successfull: I added/loaded this json file, went to TrendMicro and the memory display level on Burp's Dashboard remains in the green area. The download works, too. But I had to renew the certificate again. Why is the Disk display always red, the level at the stop, although it shows only Kb or a few MB?

 

Edited July 26, 2020 by schwups

[Dave-H]

Yes, it works for me too, in that I can now download the pattern files!

However, the download is crawlingly slow.
It used to take about 10 seconds to download a pattern file when the site was working in Opera 12.02 unmodified, now with Burp it takes about 12 minutes, at dial-up speed!
I guess this is because of using the proxy, but it does make it a bit impractical. and as I have a multi-boot machine, it would still be better to download the files in XP!

More worrying is that I'm now getting errors when I start Windows 98 saying that it "encountered an error accessing the registry" and it has to restore a backup.
This is now happening on every boot to Windows 98 if I've run Burp.

I see this in the Burp console, which must be related -

Jul 26, 2020 10:37:11 PM java.util.prefs.WindowsPreferences WindowsRegOpenKey1
WARNING: Trying to recreate Windows registry node Software\JavaSoft\Prefs\burp at root 0x80000001.

There is no "burp" entry under HKLM\Software\JavaSoft\Prefs.

[schwups]

The connection via Burp reaches a little less than 100 KByte, here. The pages are loading perceptible slower.

I have this key "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\JavaSoft\Prefs\burp". I don't have errors on reboot.

[cc333]

32 minutes ago, schwups said:

The connection via Burp reaches a little less than 100 KByte, here. The pages are loading perceptible slower.

To alleviate this problem somewhat, it is possible for Burp to be run on another PC which is configured as a proxy server to the Win98 PC?

I ask because it's possible that the slowness is due to the Win98 networking stack's inherent architectural inefficiencies, which are being exacerbated by running Burp via Java 8 on KernelEx.

c

[loblo]

I think Burp allocates a max of a little less than 100kB/s bandwith per connection. I can't see why it is so slow otherwise as I don't even remotely hit a bottleneck in CPU usage, RAM usage or disk throughput. The only way to have full speed is to run it in passthrough mode but then sites that fail without Burp fail too because when run in passthrough mode it works as a regular forwarding proxy only. I have run it in SSLstrip mode thinking that maybe avoiding encryption between the Browser and Burp would make it go faster but there was no difference.

I also use JDownloader 2 on the same Java runtime and I get full speed downloads at several MB/s sometimes when such speed is available from the servers I download from. With Opera alone I regularly saturate my 12MB/s bandwidth spread on up to 30 concurrent downloads from Bandcamp.

Plus I now tried multiple concurrent downloads via Burp and each had nearly 100kB/s download speed. These were from Bandcamp which gives you a max of about 1.4MB/s speed per slot. If I can have several concurrent downloads at 100kB/s each but not 1 at more than that only can only mean Burp restricts the speed per connection to that value.

As a convenient solution for downloading at full speed from most sites Opera can't connect to without Burp I have integrated the latest Corone build of cURL for XP in Opera links menu on web pages (I couldn't get it to work in the links panel though).

https://rwijnsma.home.xs4all.nl/files/curl/

[Link Popup Menu]
Item, Download with cURL (Remote Name) = Execute program, "C:\Program Files\curl\Curl.exe", " -L -k -O -C - --retry 10 --retry-max-time 10 --retry-delay 5 %l"
Item, Download with cURL (Remote Header Name) = Execute program, "C:\Program Files\curl\Curl.exe", " -L -k -O -J -C - --retry 10 --retry-max-time 10 --retry-delay 5 %l"

It's not posible to specify a download directory for cURL when using the -O switch as it doesn't have such an option and simply downloads files in the current working dir so I start Opera from a shortcut in which I set the working dir as the one where I want the cURL downloads to go.

For the rest I use latest youtube-dl on Python 2.7 for videos and JDownloader 2 Portable for other stuff such as Mega (JDownloader 2 can do youtube vids too and much, much more).

Now, regarding registry corruption, yes Burp sometimes corrupts the registry when it updates the list of available extensions. I know only one solution to fix this: deleting the key above the Burp settings key which is HKCU/Software/JavaSoft/Prefs. This means you lose the certificate and private key as they are stored there too and will be randomly generated anew on next start. I recommend saving the burp registry key to reg file and delete the above key and import the saved one when the problem arise as to avoid reconfiguring the browser. Maybe it's worth considering blocking the PortSwigger IP address with the Windows HOSTS file as to avoid the problem alltogether. (Burp html doc is embedded in the Jar and can be extracted easily).

Edited July 27, 2020 by loblo
Added some stuff

[schwups]

I had already testet the speed on XPSP3. Yes, it is the same.

[Dave-H]

6 hours ago, schwups said:

The connection via Burp reaches a little less than 100 KByte, here. The pages are loading perceptible slower.

I have this key "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\JavaSoft\Prefs\burp". I don't have errors on reboot.

I have never seen the Burp subkey.
Perhaps I should manually add it.

[cc333]

7 hours ago, loblo said:

I think Burp allocates a max of a little less than 100kB/s bandwith per connection.

Huh, interesting.  In that case, is there a setting somewhere which can change that allocation?  Or maybe some lines in the source code (if available)?

My home connection gets at best ~350kB/s anyway, so it's not likely to hurt me much, but it would nevertheless be nice to know if it can be somehow changed.

c

[loblo]

I don't know of any such setting and there is no source code available, beyond the free Community Edition this is an expensive commercial application which is reportedly very well protected from meaningfull decompilation by thorough obfuscation of its source.

As I mentioned above there are other options for dowloading at higher speed as well as some I haven't mentioned, I'm now thinking of also adding Retrozilla to the Opera links menu for doing some downloads.

350kB/s is not a lot these days, I don't think I could live with that.

 

[Dave-H]

I did think about perhaps buying the full version of Burp, until I saw the price!