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feat(scraping): add --curl-file to replay browser headers #13

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feat(scraping): add --curl-file to replay browser headers #13

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24 changes: 24 additions & 0 deletions README.md
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Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -331,6 +331,7 @@ python3 MetaDetective.py -d ~/loot/ -e html -o ~/results/
| `--rate` | `5` | Max requests per second (1-1000) |
| `--follow-extern` | off | Follow links to external domains |
| `--user-agent` | `MetaDetective/<ver>` | Custom or preset UA string |
| `--curl-file` | - | Replay browser headers from a 'Copy as cURL' file (`-` for stdin) |

### Display modes

Expand Down Expand Up @@ -411,6 +412,29 @@ python3 MetaDetective.py --scraping --scan --url https://target.com/ \
--user-agent 'Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MyScanner/1.0)'
```

### Browser headers (bot detection)

Some sites block scrapers based on the whole set of request headers, not just the User-Agent. `--curl-file` replays the exact headers your browser sends:

1. Open the target site in your browser (solve any challenge if prompted).
2. Open the dev tools **Network** tab, reload, right-click the page request and choose **Copy > Copy as cURL** (bash or cmd both work).
3. Paste it into a file and point MetaDetective at it:

```bash
python3 MetaDetective.py --scraping --scan --url https://target.com/ --curl-file request.txt

# Or read the command from stdin (e.g. straight from the clipboard)
pbpaste | python3 MetaDetective.py --scraping --scan --url https://target.com/ --curl-file -
```

- Every header is reused (`Accept`, `Accept-Language`, `Sec-Fetch-*`, `sec-ch-ua`, `Referer`, ...) along with cookies from `-H 'Cookie: ...'` or `-b`.
- Cookies, `Authorization` and CSRF/API-key headers are only sent to the host the command was copied from, including across redirects, so they never leak to other sites with `--follow-extern`.
- `Host`, `Content-Length`, `Accept-Encoding` and conditional headers (`If-None-Match`, ...) are dropped, since they only apply to the original request or would break response handling.
- `--user-agent`, if also given, overrides the imported User-Agent.
- Request bodies and non-GET methods in the command are ignored.

> This defeats header- and cookie-based checks. It does not change the TLS/HTTP2 fingerprint of Python's HTTP client, so services that fingerprint the connection itself may still block the scraper. Imported cookies are session credentials: keep the file private and delete it when done.

### Reverse geocoding and privacy

When a file exposes GPS coordinates, MetaDetective resolves them to a human-readable address via OpenStreetMap's Nominatim service. **This sends the target's coordinates to a third party.** Requests are rate-limited to 1/second (per Nominatim's usage policy) and cached.
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