Laboratory #5

Name: Seidygali Daryn

Group: IT1-2107

1. The Basic HTTP GET/response interaction

Let’s begin our exploration of HTTP by downloading a very simple HTML file - one that is
very short, and contains no embedded objects. Do the following:

1. Start up your web browser.

2. Start up the Wireshark packet sniffer, as described in the Introductory lab (but don’t
yet begin packet capture). Enter “http” (just the letters, not the quotation marks) in the
display-filter-specification window, so that only captured HTTP messages will be
displayed later in the packet-listing window. (We’re only interested in the HTTP
protocol here, and don’t want to see the clutter of all captured packets).
3. Wait a bit more than one minute (we’ll see why shortly), and then begin Wireshark
packet capture.
4. Enter the following to your browser http://gaia.cs.umass.edu/wireshark-labs/HTTP-
wireshark-file1.html Your browser should display the very simple, one-line HTML
file.
5. Stop Wireshark packet capture.

Screens:
1. Is your browser running HTTP version 1.0 or 1.1? What version of HTTP is the
server running?

My browser is running HTTP version 1.1. The server is running HTTP version 1.1.

2. What languages (if any) does your browser indicate that it can accept to the server?

My browser indicates it can accept the following, "ru\r\n, en; q=0.9, es; q=0.8".

3. What is the IP address of your computer? Of the gaia.cs.umass.edu server?

My IP address is 192.168.1.5 and the server's is 128.119.245.12.

4. What is the status code returned from the server to your browser?

For the return status code we need to click on the 128.119.245.12 destination then the
"Hypertext Transfer Protocol" where it says 200.
 5. When was the HTML file that you are retrieving last modified at the server?

Last-Modified: Fri, 06 Oct 2023 05:59:02 GMT\r\n

6. How many bytes of content are being returned to your browser?

Content-Length: 128\r\n

7. By inspecting the raw data in the packet content window, do you see any headers
within the data that are not displayed in the packet-listing window? If so, name one.

No different headers are displayed in the packet window if there are any.

2. The HTTP CONDITIONAL GET/response interaction

Recall from Section 2.2.5 of the text, that most web browsers perform object caching and
thus perform a conditional GET when retrieving an HTTP object. Before performing the
steps below, make sure your browser’s cache is empty. (To do this under Firefox, select
Tools->Clear Recent History and check the Cache box, or for Internet Explorer, select Tools-
>Internet Options->Delete File; these actions will remove cached files from your browser’s
cache.) Now do the following:

 Start up your web browser, and make sure your browser’s cache is cleared, as
discussed above.
 Start up the Wireshark packet sniffer
 Enter the following URL into your browser

http://gaia.cs.umass.edu/wireshark-labs/HTTP-wireshark-file2.html

Your browser should display a very simple five-line HTML file.

 Quickly enter the same URL into your browser again (or simply select the refresh
button on your browser)
 Stop Wireshark packet capture, and enter “http” in the display-filter-specification
window, so that only captured HTTP messages will be displayed later in the packet-
listing window.
 (Note: If you are unable to run Wireshark on a live network connection, you can use
the http-ethereal-trace-2 packet trace to answer the questions below; see footnote 1.
This trace file was gathered while performing the steps above on one of the author’s
computers.)
 Answer the following questions:

8. Inspect the contents of the first HTTP GET request from your browser to the server.
Do you see an “IF-MODIFIED-SINCE” line in the HTTP GET?

No there is no IF-MODIFIED-SINCE line in the GET message.

9. Inspect the contents of the server response. Did the server explicitly return the
contents of the file? How can you tell?

The server did explicitly return the contents of the file. Wireshark includes a section
titled “Line-Based Text Data” which shows what the server sent back to my browser
which is specifically what the website showed when I brought it up on my browser.

10. Now inspect the contents of the second HTTP GET request from your browser to the
server. Do you see an “IF-MODIFIED-SINCE:” line in the HTTP GET? If so, what
information follows the “IF-MODIFIED-SINCE:” header?

If-Modified-Since: Fri, 06 Oct 2023 06:09:02 GMT\r\n

11. What is the HTTP status code and phrase returned from the server in response to this
second HTTP GET? Did the server explicitly return the contents of the file? Explain.

The HTTP status code is “304: Not Modified”

3. Retrieving Long Documents

In our examples thus far, the documents retrieved have been simple and short HTML files.
Let’s next see what happens when we download a long HTML file. Do the following:

 Start up your web browser, and make sure your browser’s cache is cleared, as
discussed above.
 Start up the Wireshark packet sniffer
 Enter the following URL into your browser

http://gaia.cs.umass.edu/wireshark-labs/HTTP-wireshark-file3.html

Your browser should display the rather lengthy US Bill of Rights.

 Stop Wireshark packet capture, and enter “http” in the display-filter-specification

window, so that only captured HTTP messages will be displayed.

 (Note: If you are unable to run Wireshark on a live network connection, you can
use the http-ethereal-trace-3 packet trace to answer the questions below; see footnote
1. This trace file was gathered while performing the steps above on one of the
author’s computers.)

In the packet-listing window, you should see your HTTP GET message, followed by a
multiple-packet TCP response to your HTTP GET request. This multiple-packet
response deserves a bit of explanation. Recall from Section 2.2 (see Figure 2.9 in the
text) that the HTTP response message consists of a status line, followed by header
lines, followed by a blank line, followed by the entity body. In the case of our HTTP
GET, the entity body in the response is the entire requested HTML file. In our case
here, the HTML file is rather long, and at 4500 bytes is too large to fit in one TCP
packet. The single HTTP response message is thus broken into several pieces by TCP,
with each piece being contained within a separate TCP segment (see Figure 1.24 in
the text). In recent versions of Wireshark, Wireshark indicates each TCP segment as a
separate packet, and the fact that the single HTTP response was fragmented across
multiple TCP packets is indicated by the “TCP segment of a reassembled PDU” in the
Info column of the Wireshark display. Earlier versions of Wireshark used the
“Continuation” phrase to indicated that the entire content of an HTTP message was
broken across multiple TCP segments.. We stress here that there is no “Continuation”
message in HTTP!

Screens:
Answer the following questions:

12. How many HTTP GET request messages did your browser send? Which packet
number in the trace contains the GET message for the Bill or Rights?

My browser only sent 1 HTTP GET request to the server. The Packet that contained the
GET message was packet number

13. Which packet number in the trace contains the status code and phrase associated with
the response to the HTTP GET request?

The packet that contains the status code and phrase which the server sent in response to
the GET message was packet number 7415.
 14. What is the status code and phrase in the response?

The code and phrase in the response was 200 OK, see the image from question 13.

15. How many data-containing TCP segments were needed to carry the single HTTP
response and the text of the Bill of Rights?

Packets 7413, 7414

4. HTML Documents with Embedded Objects

Now that we’ve seen how Wireshark displays the captured packet traffic for large HTML
files, we can look at what happens when your browser downloads a file with embedded
objects, i.e., a file that includes other objects (in the example below, image files) that are
stored on another server(s).

Do the following:

 Start up your web browser, and make sure your browser’s cache is cleared, as
discussed above.
 Start up the Wireshark packet sniffer
 Enter the following URL into your browser

http://gaia.cs.umass.edu/wireshark-labs/HTTP-wireshark-file4.html

Your browser should display a short HTML file with two images. These two images
are referenced in the base HTML file. That is, the images themselves are not
contained in the HTML; instead the URLs for the images are contained in the
downloaded HTML file. As discussed in the textbook, your browser will have to
retrieve these logos from the indicated web sites. Our publisher’s logo is retrieved
th
from the gaia.cs.umass.edu web site. The image of the cover for our 5 edition (one of
our favorite covers) is stored at the caite.cs.umass.edu server. (These are two different
web servers inside cs.umass.edu).

 Stop Wireshark packet capture, and enter “http” in the display-filter-specification

window, so that only captured HTTP messages will be displayed.
 • (Note: If you are unable to run Wireshark on a live network connection, you can use
the http-ethereal-trace-4 packet trace to answer the questions below; see footnote 1.
This trace file was gathered while performing the steps above on one of the author’s
computers.)
Answer the following questions:

16. How many HTTP GET request messages did your browser send? To which
Internet addresses were these GET requests sent?

My browser sent 3 http GET message requests.

1 – WireShark, 2 – Pearson logo, 3 – 8e covermall.

17. Can you tell whether your browser downloaded the two images serially, or
whether they were downloaded from the two web sites in parallel? Explain.

The browser downloaded the two images in serially. I believe this to be the case
because the first image was requested and sent before the second image was requested
by the browser. Had they been running in parallel, both files would have been
requested then would have returned in the same time period. In this case however, the
second image was only requested after the first image came back.
5 HTTP Authentication
Finally, let’s try visiting a web site that is password-protected and examine the sequence of
HTTP message exchanged for such a site. The URL
http://gaia.cs.umass.edu/wireshark-labs/protected_pages/HTTP-wireshark-file5.html is
password protected. The username is “wireshark-students” (without the quotes), and the
password is “network” (again, without the quotes). So let’s access this “secure” password-
protected site. Do the following:

 Make sure your browser’s cache is cleared, as discussed above, and close down your
browser. Then, start up your browser
 Start up the Wireshark packet sniffer
 Enter the following URL into your browser

http://gaia.cs.umass.edu/wireshark-labs/protected_pages/HTTP-wireshark- file5.html
Type the requested user name and password into the pop up box.

 Stop Wireshark packet capture, and enter “http” in the display-filter-specification

window, so that only captured HTTP messages will be displayed later in the packet-
listing window.
 (Note: If you are unable to run Wireshark on a live network connection, you can use
the http-ethereal-trace-5 packet trace to answer the questions below; see footnote 2.
This trace file was gathered while performing the steps above on one of the author’s
computers.)

Now let’s examine the Wireshark output. You might want to first read up on HTTP
authentication by reviewing the easy-to-read material on “HTTP Access
Authentication Framework” at http://frontier.userland.com/stories/storyReader$2159

Screens:
 Answer the following questions:

18. What is the server’s response (status code and phrase) in response to the initial
HTTP GET message from your browser?

The servers intial response was “401 Authentication Required”

19. When your browser’s sends the HTTP GET message for the second time, what
new field is included in the HTTP GET message?

WWW-Authenticate: Basic realm="wireshark-students only"\r\n

The username (wireshark-students) and password (network) that you entered are
encoded in the string of characters
(d2lyZXNoYXJrLXN0dWRlbnRzOm5ldHdvcms=) following the “Authorization:
Basic” header in the client’s HTTP GET message. While it may appear that your
username and password are encrypted, they are simply encoded in a format known as
Base64 format. The username and password are not encrypted! To see this, go to
http://www.motobit.com/util/base64-decoder-encoder.asp and enter the base64-
encoded string d2lyZXNoYXJrLXN0dWRlbnRz and decode. Voila! You have
translated from Base64 encoding to ASCII encoding, and thus should see your
username! To view the password, enter the remainder of the string Om5ldHdvcms=
and press decode. Since anyone can download a tool like Wireshark and sniff packets
(not just their own) passing by their network adaptor, and anyone can translate from
Base64 to ASCII (you just did it!), it should be clear to you that simple passwords on
WWW sites are not secure unless additional measures are taken.

Fear not! As we will see in Chapter 8, there are ways to make WWW access more secure.
However, we’ll clearly need something that goes beyond the basic HTTP authentication
framework!