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Hiding stylesheet links from source code | Forum

Topic location: Forum home » Support » General Questions
Ash
Ash Apr 3 '20

Hi All


I know its not advisable to hide source codes via diableing ctrl+u function...


However i dont want any gheek to know that its made from oxwall,


So any of your experts can please share a trick on how to hide


All below stylesheet links:

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"ow_static/plugins/fontawesome/css/all.min.css


bascially i dont want to show "OW_Static"


Thanks in advance

Cheers

Ash

Patricia Zorrilla Leader
Patricia Zorrilla Apr 3 '20

OxWall is free to use... as long as you do not remove the links relating to its authorship. It's explained here:

https://developers.oxwall.com/license

I think that hiding OxWall is not in solidarity with the creators and all the people who have been collaborating for so many years.

What do you mean, you created it yourself?

Anyone who knows a little bit about social networking software is going to find you out. You can "search and replace" all occurrences of "OW_" with "ASH_" and reinstall... but it's ugly, it's unethical.

Please support OxWall.


dave Leader
dave Apr 3 '20
+1  Patricia 


Ash there is very little you can do because the css and js files have to be available on the server for the browser (user side).   And any attempt to hide those links just means a few extra keystrokes for anyone to get the same information you are trying to hide. 


My advice is to tell us why you want to hide those and maybe the larger issue you are having can be addressed.   

Ash
Ash Apr 4 '20
Dear Patricia - You took it wrongly, My sincere request to you is to please read things properly before concluding and jumping for answers, i am not at all talking about source codes! i specifically mentioned "stylesheets" and its not ow_ was an example, it even applies for bootstrap... i just don't want to show my "stylesheet links" that's all!
Quote from Patricia Zorrilla

OxWall is free to use... as long as you do not remove the links relating to its authorship. It's explained here:

https://developers.oxwall.com/license

I think that hiding OxWall is not in solidarity with the creators and all the people who have been collaborating for so many years.

What do you mean, you created it yourself?

Anyone who knows a little bit about social networking software is going to find you out. You can "search and replace" all occurrences of "OW_" with "ASH_" and reinstall... but it's ugly, it's unethical.

Please support OxWall.



Ash
Ash Apr 4 '20
Thank you for your understanding sir, my objective is: Since i keep taking part in hackathons, tenders, give client demos and for all this i use oxwall, elgg and other frameworks.. 


So for time being it many times becomes necessary for me to hide few things (especially when demo links are out in competition) , i know it cannot be removed, nor advisable since its client side stuff! 


However i just want the competitors do some maths and bang their head before knowing what script the demo is made from!
Quote from dave +1  Patricia 


Ash there is very little you can do because the css and js files have to be available on the server for the browser (user side).   And any attempt to hide those links just means a few extra keystrokes for anyone to get the same information you are trying to hide. 


My advice is to tell us why you want to hide those and maybe the larger issue you are having can be addressed.   


Ash
Ash Apr 4 '20
And there is a proper method for achieving above! Its called code obfuscation. 


I found out a solution and tool for this here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1R-Jo188678


But i really dont know which file in which part of what folder from c-panel and what will be its other effects. 

The Forum post is edited by Ash Apr 4 '20
dave Leader
dave Apr 4 '20
Ash - there are several reasons you never want to do something like that.   


1. You are giving control of your site content over to who knows who.

2. If they wanted to change the content that you receive to maybe porn or something illegal they can do so. 

3. Security through obscurity does not work enough to make it a viable option. 

4. You would me making your risk greater by choosing such a method.


You could base64 the link but that would mean you would have to decode it before the browser grabbed it and that means you would still be able to see it in source view.


You could do the old javascript trick that we used to do with emails and obfuscate the link using javascript, but still with the use of the tools available in consoles they can easily bypass that. 


You could disable the right click menu that includes the view source link using js, but even that is bypassed quite easily. 


You could try using a smarty utility to hide it but once it reaches the browser it again is easy to get the info. 


You could try htaccess to limit the request referrals to only those that come from the domain itself, but that can cause issues when some browsers send a blank referral.


You could use ionCube to hide the content but oxwall does not support ionCube so its a moot point.


Unless there is something that i have not heard of, there is just no way that i know of to hide, or obfuscate that value and still have it hidden in view source.  





The Forum post is edited by dave Apr 4 '20