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<title>Mirrors — Silent Mode</title>
<meta name="description" content="Cloudflare's Bot Fight Mode fingerprints Electron's TLS handshake and blocks Theseus with HTTP 503. BNS `p` records reverse-proxy the request through Node's HTTP stack, bypassing the fingerprint — Theseus renders the page under a .bch name.">
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  <a class="brand" href="./"><svg class="logo" viewBox="0 0 32 20" aria-hidden="true"><rect class="l1" x="1.5" y="3.5" width="17" height="13" rx="6.5" ry="6.5" fill="none" stroke-width="2.6"/><rect class="l2" x="13.5" y="3.5" width="17" height="13" rx="6.5" ry="6.5" fill="none" stroke-width="2.6"/></svg>Silent <span class="g">Mode</span></a>
  <a href="theseus">Theseus</a>
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</nav>

<header class="hero">
  <h1>Reverse-proxy <span class="g">mirrors</span></h1>
  <p class="tag">Some sites — including several of the most-cited pages in the Bitcoin
    Cash ecosystem — return <b>HTTP 503</b> to Theseus, no matter what user-agent it sends.
    A short note on why, and how a <code class="inline">.bch</code> name gets you through.</p>
</header>

<div class="wrap">

<!-- ============ WHAT'S HAPPENING ============ -->
<section>
  <h2>Why Theseus 503s on some sites</h2>
  <p class="lede">Cloudflare's Bot Fight Mode (and similar WAF rules) fingerprints the
    <b>TLS ClientHello</b> — the cipher list, extensions, and JA3/JA4 hash your browser
    sends before any HTTP header is negotiated. Chromium's TLS stack, which Theseus is
    built on via Electron, ships with a slightly different fingerprint than desktop
    Chrome — enough to trigger the bot heuristic. The server replies with a short
    503 page and the load fails.</p>
  <p class="lede">Stripping <code class="inline">Electron/…</code> from the user-agent
    doesn't help: the fingerprint sits below HTTP. Disabling HTTP/2 doesn't help either.
    From the site's perspective, Theseus is indistinguishable from a scraper.</p>
</section>

<!-- ============ THE FIX ============ -->
<section>
  <h2>What a <code class="inline">p</code> record does</h2>
  <p class="lede">A BCDN name can carry a <code class="inline">p</code> record — a
    single upstream URL. When Theseus loads a name whose record picker returns
    <code class="inline">p</code>, it doesn't hand the request to Chromium's network
    stack. It hands it to <b>Node's <code class="inline">fetch()</code></b> from the
    main process, which uses a different HTTP client (undici) with a completely
    different TLS fingerprint — one Cloudflare doesn't flag. The response body comes
    back and gets served under the <code class="inline">.bch</code> origin.</p>
  <p class="lede">The address bar stays on the BNS name; the upstream never sees your
    IP resolve through Cloudflare's browser-bot rules, only through Theseus's outbound
    Node fetch. No captcha, no interstitial, no 503.</p>
  <p class="lede">Trade-offs to know: the <code class="inline">p</code> path uses the
    upstream's own DNS and public certificate authority (unlike <code class="inline">ip</code>,
    which pins to a raw IP + on-chain TLS fingerprint), and Theseus streams the body
    through its own process — so the upstream sees Theseus's outbound IP, not yours.
    This is a shared proxy in effect, though only for the one request.</p>
</section>

<!-- ============ FEATURED MIRRORS ============ -->
<section>
  <h2>Featured mirrors</h2>
  <p class="lede">These names are registered on the Bitcoin Cash chain with a
    <code class="inline">p</code> record pointing at a Cloudflare-fronted upstream
    Theseus can't reach directly. Click any to open it in Theseus (or via
    <a href="https://navigate.st/">navigate.st</a> if you don't have the browser
    installed yet).</p>

  <div class="mirror-list" id="mirror-list">
    <!-- Populated at ship time. Keep entries in sync with site/home-cards.json's
         "Mirrored" section so the home tiles and this page tell the same story. -->
    <div class="empty-note">
      <b>No mirrors published yet.</b> The list will fill in as names are minted
      through Sirius. Check back, or mint one yourself — instructions below.
    </div>
  </div>

  <p class="lede" style="margin-top:1.2rem">
    <b>See a site missing?</b> If a Cloudflare-fronted page you care about is
    unreachable from Theseus, either mint a <code class="inline">p</code> record for
    it yourself, or open an issue on
    <a href="https://code.silentmode.st/silentmode/theseus">the Theseus repo</a> and
    we'll add it to the featured list once it's on chain.
  </p>
</section>

<!-- ============ DIY ============ -->
<section>
  <h2>Mint a mirror yourself</h2>
  <p class="lede">Registration costs a few sats of BCH. Theseus 0.3.14+ ships with the
    <b>Aegis wallet</b> — the wallet the Sirius UI signs against — so this is a couple
    of clicks once your wallet has a small balance.</p>

  <div>
    <div class="step">
      <div class="n">1</div>
      <div class="b">Open <a href="https://sirius.x/">sirius.x</a> in Theseus and search
        for the label you want. Pick a <code class="k">.bch</code> TLD if the site is
        BCH-related; other registered TLDs work too. Mint the name.</div>
    </div>
    <div class="step">
      <div class="n">2</div>
      <div class="b">Once minted, open the name's record editor and add:
        <br><code class="k">p: "https://the-original-upstream.example/"</code>
        <br>The trailing slash matters — anything in the path is used as a prefix
        for every request.</div>
    </div>
    <div class="step">
      <div class="n">3</div>
      <div class="b">Sign the record change. Wait one confirmation. The record is live
        as soon as the next Theseus resolve fetches the beacon.</div>
    </div>
    <div class="step">
      <div class="n">4</div>
      <div class="b">Test: type <code class="k">yourname.bch</code> in Theseus's address
        bar. If the upstream returns 200, Theseus renders it under your name. Send us
        the name and we'll add it to the featured list.</div>
    </div>
  </div>

  <div class="note" style="margin-top:1.4rem">
    <b>Be honest about what a mirror is.</b> The upstream is unchanged — the site
    operator hasn't consented to being served under your BNS name, and doesn't get
    paid for any traffic that lands through the mirror. This is a workaround for a
    reachability problem, not a rehosting. If you'd rather leave the mirror to us,
    open an issue and we'll consider whether it's canonical enough to include.
  </div>
</section>

<!-- ============ TECHNICAL DETAIL ============ -->
<section>
  <h2>The relevant code</h2>
  <p class="lede">For anyone curious about the exact mechanism:</p>
  <ul style="color:var(--mut);font-size:14px;line-height:1.7;padding-left:1.2rem">
    <li>Record priority — <code class="inline">pickRecord()</code> in Argus:
        <code class="inline">h &gt; s3 &gt; ip &gt; p &gt; u</code> at the apex, and
        subdomain inheritance never picks <code class="inline">p</code>. Theseus
        carries an inline copy to keep in step.</li>
    <li>Theseus proxy pipeline — <a href="https://code.silentmode.st/silentmode/theseus/src/branch/master/main.js"><code class="inline">theseus/main.js</code></a>,
        the <code class="inline">serveP</code> closure inside <code class="inline">serveBns()</code>.
        Uses <code class="inline">fetch(target, { redirect: "manual" })</code>
        from the main process, which is Node's undici — a different TLS stack from
        Chromium's, and the reason the fingerprint check doesn't fire.</li>
  </ul>
</section>

</div>

<footer>
  <div>Silent Mode — a Deviant project.</div>
  <div class="fine">Mirrors are provided as-is. The upstream site's terms and privacy
    policy still apply — a <code class="inline">.bch</code> name changes only how the
    bytes reach you, not who wrote them.</div>
</footer>

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