Show HN: Who runs this – A Chrome extension that shows who runs a site

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/who-runs-this/jfccjdbjpkmppcpdogdfbgillpaakmgn

by kaolti • 10 years ago

50 44 10 years ago

chrome.google.com

kaolti16• 10 years ago

May have a couple of bugs but one use case would be finding out that rottentomatoes.com is run by Comcast.

kspaans2• 10 years ago

When run against www.ssa.gov it says "something seems to be wrong" LOL

TazeTSchnitzel2• 10 years ago

For .gov domains it might as well just show “The Government of the United States”.

kaolti16• 10 years ago

Yep, could be an easy fix huh

daxelrod• 10 years ago

That's not exclusively true anymore. For example, New York City has nyc.gov .

ridiculous_fish• 10 years ago

Very cool idea. I noticed it reports that ridiculousfish.com "is run by" namecheap, but namecheap is only the registrar and does not run or even host the site.

kaolti16• 10 years ago

Thanks! Yea, the problem is the registrant organization of the domain is set to Namecheap. Not sure how to get around domain privacy for now.

kspaans2• 10 years ago

Maybe the extension could check the info on the SSL certificates (if available) if the domain is registered through a proxy?

MasterScrat2• 10 years ago

You could have a list to recognise proxy names and in this case display clearly that the real owner has been obfuscated...

TazeTSchnitzel2• 10 years ago

Hmm. It can't tell me that thewaytohappiness.org is run by Scientology.

But expecting it to see through Scientology front groups is perhaps asking too much. ^^

diegorbaquero• 10 years ago

When ran against my own domain (diegorbaquero.com) it just shows "Something seems to be wrong"

kaolti16• 10 years ago

Yea, it doesn't check for registrant name atm, should probably show that, if there's no registrant org.

MasterScrat2• 10 years ago

What would be even more useful would be a "that's surprising!" button next to the result.

When an owner is often reported as surprising for a domain, the extension should either blink or directly display the owner without being clicked.

kaolti16• 10 years ago

That's awesome, add that to the todos.

djcollier• 10 years ago

Could you share a link to the repo if its available? Very cool idea!

kaolti16• 10 years ago

Thanks! Here it is: https://github.com/kaolti/Who-Runs-This.git

rjbrock3• 10 years ago

This appears to be a private key (so no one should ever be able to read this file): https://github.com/kaolti/Who-Runs-This/blob/master/key.pem

Is this for publishing to the chrome app store? If it is, I recommend taking down the extension and republishing with a new secure key ASAP.

dylz• 10 years ago

Would be nice to note that it sends hostnames of the sites you visit in plaintext, no SSL/TLS, across the internet to:

  http://api.corpwatch.org/companies
  http://104.236.253.171:9119

kaolti16• 10 years ago

Is that really stupid?

jsmthrowaway3• 10 years ago

Yes.

jsmthrowaway3• 10 years ago

Nice catch. 104.236/16 is DigitalOcean, so best guess would be some kind of server belonging to the author.

kaolti16• 10 years ago

It is mine, yea.

kaolti16• 10 years ago

Thanks for all the feedback guys! Took it down for now and will republish when it's fixed.

scottydelta4• 10 years ago

Is that a private key to connect to your server in your repo? https://github.com/kaolti/Who-Runs-This/blob/master/key.pem

kaolti16• 10 years ago

Hehe, was for the Chrome store, got rid of it now.

scottydelta4• 10 years ago

[deleted]

jnbiche• 10 years ago

Sorry, man, I'd recommend you re-package with a new key, and re-publish. There are numerous sites that log all Github commits, that private key is public now. Anyone could sign any other extension as you now.

jhiggins777• 10 years ago

Link is broken

Show HN: Who runs this – A Chrome extension that shows who runs a site

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