CookieMonster 🥠

CookieMonster is an open-source tool designed to automate the process of fetching valid cookies and analyzing additional network requests for websites protected by services like Cloudflare. By using a headful Chrome browser and Playwright, it helps users replicate browser-like behavior in their scraping scripts.

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🚀 Features

• Built-in Headful Chrome: Chrome is included in the Docker image and automatically started when the container runs—no external browser setup required.
• Playwright Automation: Captures network requests and cookies programmatically.
• Cookie Harvesting: Extracts valid cookies that can be used for authenticated scraping.
• Header Analysis: Logs details of additional network requests (e.g., xhr, fetch) including URL, HTTP methods, and headers.
• Optional VNC Debugging: Observe the browser in real-time by exposing a VNC server on port 3000.

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🛠️ How It Works

1. Start the Browser: The container launches a headful Chrome browser, configured automatically.
2. Capture Requests: As the target URL is loaded, the script intercepts network requests of type xhr or fetch.
3. Extract Data:
   • Cookies: Collects valid cookies set during browsing.
   • Request Details: Logs the URL, HTTP method, POST data (if applicable), and headers for additional requests sent by the browser.
4. Save Results: Outputs all gathered data as a structured JSON file (/tmp/result.json).

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📦 Installation

Prerequisites

• Docker (Chrome and Playwright are bundled in the image).

Pull the Docker Image

docker pull ghcr.io/stephankaag/cookie-monster

Or, build the Docker Image locally

If you want to make local modifications to these images for development purposes or just to customize the logic:

git clone https://github.com/stephankaag/cookie-monster.git
cd cookie-monster
docker build -t cookie-monster .

🚦 Usage

Run the CookieMonster Container

Replace <TARGET_URL> with the desired URL:

docker run -e URL="<TARGET_URL>" cookie-monster

Optional: Debugging with VNC

docker run -e URL="<TARGET_URL>" -p 3000:3000 cookie-monster

Access the VNC server via http://localhost:3000 in your browser.

Example Script for Running & Extracting Results

docker run -e URL=https://www.imdb.com/calendar -p 3000:3000 cookie-monster
CONTAINER_ID=$(docker ps -alq)
docker cp $CONTAINER_ID:/tmp/result.json .

This script runs the container, extracts the result file, and saves it to your local machine.

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🔧 Environment Variables

• URL: The target URL to load and fetch cookies from.
• DEBUG: (Optional) Set to 1 to enable detailed logs in the console.

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🛡️ Disclaimer

CookieMonster is a tool intended for ethical purposes only. Ensure you have permission to access and scrape the websites you target. The maintainers are not responsible for misuse.

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🙌 Contributions

Contributions, issues, and feature requests are welcome! Feel free to open an issue or create a pull request.

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📄 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for details.

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❤️ Acknowledgments

• Playwright for powerful browser automation.
• KasmVNC Base Images from LinuxServer for a full featured web native Linux desktop experience.