~ CODES & COMMANDS INDEX ~
INTRODUCTION TO WTV-TRICKS: First I have to clarify something. In WTV Hacking circles there is no term more overused than "TRICKS". It can mean one of three things.
First, a "trick" can simply be a technique to get the browser or service to something it was not intended to do... such as accessing WTV URLs. There are numerous WTV newsgroups and web pages with "tricks" or "secrets" in their name. This term probably was derived from the following...
Second, Tricks refers to the WTV-TRICKS Site which WNI maintains for its tech staff and licensees. This Site's URL is WTV-TRICKS:/TRICKS. Which brings us to...
Third, and the thrust of this page, Tricks as a class of WNI IP URL services beginning with "wtv-tricks:/xxxxxx". It is one of about 45 such IP services that can be found on our Client:ShowServices IP List. This list is accessible to those with Plus and DP boxes, but the URL has never been found for Classic boxes.
WTV-TRICKS IP SERVICE: The wtv-tricks service is unique among the IP Services. If one looks some of the wtv-tricks URLs one notices that they duplicate many of the pages in our Browser. (Note these active links will not work with PCs.)
wtv-tricks:/AddressBook
wtv-tricks:/AroundTown
wtv-tricks:/chat
wtv-tricks:/community
wtv-tricks:/discuss
wtv-tricks:/entertainment
wtv-tricks:/explore
wtv-tricks:/home
wtv-tricks:/mail
wtv-tricks:/money
wtv-tricks:/news
wtv-tricks:/pagebuilder
wtv-tricks:/search
wtv-tricks:/shopping
Of course there are also those two WTV PW protected Sites
and
In the following case the tricks URL seems to duplicate a Client function:
and
Blast was found in the official TRICKS Site and allows one to Blast their Cache. Unfortunately, WNI has blocked access to their cache killer.
WHY TRICKS? According to an @corpie I once corresponded with, wtv-tricks was apparently designed to work off of WNI's Partner's web pages. Here's some old correspndence with an @corpie from September 3 '98 I asked:
"In looking at the vast number of commands that WTV uses, I have always wondered why they were all needed? I also have to wonder why it's necessary to have two ways to get to our Home Page wtv-home:/home and wtv-tricks:/home?
The @corpie responded:
"That one is actually one of the reasons for having wtv-tricks in the first place. Except when the client is broken (sigh), an external web site can't send you to the home page; it was considered desirable for our partners (such as Excite) to be able to have a home link, and a few other things."
THE SERVER CONNECTION: What makes tricks fascinating is that it's on the Client:ShowServices list. Therefore all wtv-tricks fetches are just requests to the WNI servers. That tricks is on this IP list is not suprising. In WNI's propritary system, all WTV Browser URLs are assigned a wtv-service:/file name as opposed to actual IP:ports. Actual IP:ports are assigned during login. This system offers WNI a great deal of flexibility to reassign server IPs to dynamically balance the load on the network. It also permits WNI's many subnets. Some are to support different hardware, some for beta testers etc.
Yet, all the wtv-tricks URLs seem to do is force some other WNI IP service, such as wtv-mail or wtv-home, to respond! For example, if I go to wtv-tricks:/home in the GoTo Box, the URL I get is
wtv-home:/home
not
wtv-tricks:/home.
It seems tricks were designed as a backup IP which can act as a central conduit to other WNI servers and one that can work on non-trusted pages such as an ordinary web page.
LIMITED TRICKS URLs: What makes TRICKS intriguing is they as a class of services they seeem so unique and versatile, yet we know so little about them. For example why would WNI create a backup function that only accessed a small group of URLs? What good does a backup do getting us to our Home Page if there were no other commands we could use while there?
In the past 3.5 years since people have been collecting wtv-tricks URLs, the list remains pretty small. That list can be found here. As we find more interchangeability in the URLs this list will grow.
So the question remains: does TRICKS as a service have any potential we have not yet recognized? For example we can get to the main Chat page using wtv-tricks:/chat URL. This takes us to
wtv-chat:/chat.
From there were can go on to
wtv-chat:/talk-city. Yet, we can not use
wtv-tricks:/talk-city or
wtv-tricks:/chat/talk-city, or
wtv-tricks:/chat?talk-city.
Yet, it's just been reported there's a
wtv-tricks:/chat-new2webtv that to us to the "new2webtv" room at TalkCity. Yet this formula does not work with other rooms at TCity.
While a review of the tricks URLs List will show some fairly complex tricks URLs, to date no simple way has been found to modify a wtv-tricks URL to permit it to just get us to wtv-chat:/talk-city. So, are there any rules for modifying tricks URLs?
WTV-TRICKS REDIRECTS: There may be some way to modify tricks URLs to take advantage of tricks unique properties. For instance this code from the Fall 99 Upgrade letter is interesting... even if the page can't be found:
wtv-tricks:/content?redirect?req-id=itv-index We know from other such example the "req-id" ties your account name to the page.
Another redirect, this time in a slightly different form, takes you to the hacking NG.
wtv-tricks:/redirect-news?path=alt.discuss.webtv.hacking
But, alas, this one will not take you to TCity: wtv-tricks:/redirect-chat?path=talk-city
nor does this take us to our "inbox" in mail:
wtv-tricks:/redirect-mail?path=inbox
TECHNICAL PROBLEMS POPUP: Anyone who has experimented with tricks URLs knows they either work or we get a Technical Problem pop-up. It's probably safe to assume that this popup is just the tricks sever saying it could not pass the URL though. This raises the question whether the tricks servers have some filter to only pass through pre-approved URLs.
INTERCHANGIBILITY: It has long been noted that many file://rom images can seemingly be access by placing ANY WTV IP service in front.
The tricks URLs are interchagable with some other IP services. For example on the TRICKS INDEX page is a wtv-home:/ jpg. On a hunch I changed it to a wtv-tricks URL and was able to place it on the page... though It's nothing a PC user would see.
There are other examples of this interchangibility. For example wasdiscovered@ found that the wtv-content:/ URLs used on the original Dec 96 upgrade notice could be converted from wtv-content:/xxxxx to wtv-tricks:/content?xxxxx. For example:
wtv-tricks:/content?demo_1.1/more.html
could access:
wtv-content:/demo_1.1/more.html
So could the name of the original IP service merely be shifted into the file name section?
Here's another example of interchangability. Wasdiscovered posted this wtv-tricks:/help?topic=Index&subtopic=Main&page=1&showLinksToSettings=&showTryIt=
But the referrer from the page we get is actually:
wtv-guide:/help?topic=Index&subtopic=Main&page=1&showLinksToSettings=&showTryIt=
So in this case the wtv-tricks completely replaced the wtv-guide. It did not become wtv-tricks:/guide/help?
CONCLUSION: Given WNI's determination to block all manual access to their URLs and Commands... wtv-tricks deserves even more consideration. In the summer 98 upgrade WNI went out of its way to kill just about all the wtv-xxxxx:/urls, but they did not, maybe could not, touch wtv-tricks. Tricks is still active in the GoTo and on ordinary web pages.
Given the dual-addressing, the client functions, and the IP service interchangeability, we need to think more about the Tricks Service. Unfortunately, there seem to be no rules for modifying tricks URLs that could be exploited.