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               Libwhisker official release v2.4
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What is Libwhisker:

Libwhisker is a Perl module geared specificly for HTTP testing.
Libwhisker has a few design principles:

- Portable: runs with 0 changes on Unix, Windows, etc (100% Perl)
- Flexible: designed with a 'no rules' approach
- Contained: designed to not require external modules when possible
- Localized: does not require installation to use


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  README README README README README README README README README
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"How do I run/use Libwhisker?"

Libwhisker is not a program to run.  It's a library for people to
make programs with.  There is nothing to 'run' in Libwhisker.  If
you're looking for a CGI scanner (whisker), you're in the wrong
place.  Whisker is separate from Libwhisker.


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               Information on Libwhisker library
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Libwhisker's 'no rules' approach:

Since the intent of this library is to use it in testing, fuzzing, 
and quality assurance situations, odds are the library will need to 
be capable of handling protocol malformities and other wackiness.  
Many existing Perl libraries are not flexible when you try to break 
the protocol--they assume you want to make a legitimate request.
Libwhisker, on the other hand, is designed to not impose any rules
on the software, thus allowing it to do whatever you really want it
to do, including stuff not normally considered 'legal' or 'sane'
by RFC/protocol definition.

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What Libwhisker can do for you:

Do you have a demonstration program, application, or exploit that
interacts over HTTP?  Well, using Libwhisker means your program:

- Can communicate over HTTP 0.9, 1.0, and 1.1
- Can use persistant connections (keep-alives)
- Has proxy support
- Has anti-IDS support
- Has SSL support
- Can receive chunked encoding
- Has nonblock/timeout support built in (platform-dependant...)
- Has basic and NTLM authentication support (both server and proxy)

That way you don't have to code it all yourself--use Libwhisker
and all those features are transparently available automatically.
So call now, operators are standing by.

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Why not use other perl modules?

Libwhisker actually combines the functionality LWP, URI, HTML::Parser,
MIME::Base64, and a handful of other modules into a single file that is
approximately 105k (when POD is stripped).

One of the annoyances of LWP et. al. is that they require local system
installation before they can be used--and that installation sometimes
requires compilation of C code files.  This can be a problem if you have a
system that lacks a compiler (commercial unix platforms, Windows, etc),
and it also makes portability very difficult.  Libwhisker is 100% native
Perl, so no additional compilers are necessary.  It's one single 105k text
file (i.e. very portable), which doesn't have to actually be
installed--just put it in the same directory as your perl script and go!  
And since Libwhisker doesn't require external modules to work**, that means
you should be good to go with a perl binary, the LW2.pm file, and your perl
script--nothing else needed!  Great for those 'security audit' situations
where installing an entire perl distribution on a target system is out of
the question...

Of course, that doesn't mean that you shouldn't use LWP.  Just keep in
mind that LWP (and other modules, in general) were written to follow
proper RFC protocols.  This is fine and dandy; but if you're writing
exploits, sometimes you need to purposefully break some aspect of the
protocol, and typically the published Perl modules don't provide the
capabilities to do this.

And lastly, Libwhisker has been benchmarked against LWP--and it's been
found to be almost three times as fast.

** you do need a local Socket.pm for your system to use any of the network
   functionality; however, if you don't have Socket support, you can still
   use the Libwhisker utility/parsing functions without problem.

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Note to Libwhisker 1.x users:

Libwhisker 2.0 is *not* backwards-compatible with Libwhisker 1.x. A few
things were moved around and renamed.  Changing 'use LW' to 'use LW2' in
your programs is not enough--you may need to make code changes to your
program.  See the 'CHANGES' file.

However, there is now a 'bridge' LW.pm module in the compat/ directory,
which will use LW2 (libwhisker 2.x) functions to emulate the LW
(libwhisker 1.x) functionality.  This should allow programs written to
use LW (libwhisker 1.x) to use LW2 (libwhisker 2.x) without any changes.
You can have the compatibility bridge automatically installed by using
the 'install_lw1' Makefile.pl command.

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How to use Libwhisker:

Use the included api_demo.pl script to see how to make a basic request
using the library.  Otherwise, there is embedded POD documentation
for most of the functions within LW2.pm.

You should be able to use the LW2.pm by including it in the 
same directory as the script that requires it.  Otherwise run
"perl Makefile.pl install" to install it into your local perl 
module site directory.

To use SSL support, you will need Net::SSLeay or Crypt::SSLeay, as
well as OpenSSL installed.  Libwhisker will still work without any 
of them, you just won't have any SSL support.  And technically 
Libwhisker will still work without Socket support, but it's very 
limited then.  Crypt::SSLeay (also known as Net::SSL) is available
precompiled for the Windows ActiveState package; Unix platforms
should use Net::SSLeay, which has many more features than Net::SSL.

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Libwhisker is under the GPL.

That means it's free for use and redistribution under the terms of
the GNU Public License (version 2).  A copy is included with the
development source distribution, or from http://www.gnu.org/

If you wish to (re)use Libwhisker code in a commercial product, or
distribute it with a commercial product, please contact me at
rfp@wiretrip.net.

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Tested platforms:

Libwhisker has been successfully ran on:
- Linux, using perl 5.004 and higher
- ActiveState Perl for Windows, based on perl 5.6.x and 5.005
- Sun Solaris, perl 5.004 and higher
- SGI IRIX, perl 5.004 and higher

Libwhisker does *not* run with perl 5.003 and earlier.  There were
too many bugs in 5.003 which would require too many workarounds to
accomodate while still maintaining minimal code size and speed.

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Feedback about Libwhisker:

Send it to me directly at rfp@wiretrip.net (please use the word
'libwhisker' in the subject), or toss it out on the
whisker-devel mailing list, whisker-devel@lists.sourceforge.net.
You can subscribe by going to the mailing list section at
http://sourceforge.net/projects/whisker/

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