GoComics recently added a Bunny Shield challenge (read here about what this broke) for requests coming from IPs that belong to some VPNs, data centers, or other shared IPs.
📢 For the first time, release 4.0.0 can bypass the Bunny Shield challenge! 🎉
👉 When needed, the Bunny Shield JS Proof-of-Work (PoW) resolver uses the host OS browser in headless mode. This avoids increasing the app size. The possible browsers are queried with different priorities depending on the OS:
Windows: Edge, Chrome, Brave, Firefox.
Linux: firefox-esr, firefox, chromium, google-chrome (plus their Flatpak versions).
Other differences:
The Chromium family is invoked via a local CDP WebSocket.
The Firefox family is invoked via a WebDriver BiDi WebSocket.
The app will reuse previously solved clearance cookies until a new Bunny Shield challenge is presented.
Bypassing the Bunny Shield challenge in Debian:
👉 To reduce the frequency of GoComics hitting the app with Bunny Shield challenges, “403 Access Forbidden” and “429 Too Many Requests”, the use of requests was replaced with curl_cffi, leading to fingerprints closer to those of a real browser.
⚠️ The Bunny Shield resolver and other mitigations cannot fix everything!
🌐 When you use a VPN, GoComics can SOMETIMES block the app and even a full browser with a 403 error for your IP. This shows in a browser as follows:
Since release 3.1.2, the app will show this feedback to the user when in this case:
🌐 GoComics also limits the number of comic strips users could request within a given time frame. When they decide you need to “cool down” for a while, they will show you this “429 Too Many Requests” page in a web browser:
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