Reading data from web - https on Windows 7

[AttilaP]

Hi!

I've created a program which is reading data from the web. The site is using https, and while it works fine for me on Windows 10 x64, it fails on Windows 7 x64 at my partner.

I am using ObjCreate("WinHttp.WinHttpRequest.5.1") and the Send method always fails with error: "An error occurred in the secure channel support".

I've read through that Win7 does not support TLS1.2 by default, so I tried to fix this first. I followed this article:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/update-to-enable-tls-1-1-and-tls-1-2-as-default-secure-protocols-in-winhttp-in-windows-c4bd73d2-31d7-761e-0178-11268bb10392

- It turned out that kb3140245 is already installed. Checked winhttp.dll and webio.dll files in SysWOW64 and system32 folder in C:\Windows, both are correct (winhttp: 6.1.7601.24xxx, webio: 6.1.7601.23375)

- Registry keys seems to be correct. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SCHANNEL\Protocols\TLS 1.1\Client and TLS 1.2\Client are there, both having DisabledByDefault as 0. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\WinHttp has DefaultSecureProtocols with 0xa80, also tried with 0x800, same error

- Control Panel's internet settings checked, TLS1.0 to TLS 1.2 enabled, SSL2.0 and SSL3.0 are disabled. Tried to switch on all, enable only 1.2, same error.

- Tried to add $objHTTP.option(9) = 2048 to use TLS 1.2, same error

- Tried to change the object to ObjCreate("MSXML2.ServerXMLHTTP.6.0"), same error

- Tried to change the link to http:// instead of https:// - it has a redirect, page does not support http at all.

- Tried to use _IE to navigate to the page and get the content. As I am working with JSONs, it fails - IE shows the download button instead of rendering the JSON text, like Chrome does.

 

I am out of ideas. This is really inconvenient for me, my partner is not even able to use the software. Sure I could say Win7 is old, outdated, should be updated - that's not my choice.

Do somebody have idea how to retrieve data from the web w/o winhttp, or how to get rid of this error?

 

Thank you in advance,

Attila

Edited February 19, 2021 by AttilaP

[mikell]

I have got some issues using winhttp in an old OS too and it worked super nice using curl

Edit: example of use

#include <AutoItConstants.au3>

Func __INetRead($url)
   Local $cmd = "curl -L -s -k -A 'Mozilla/4.0(compatible;MSIE7.0;WindowsNT5.1)' " & $url
   Local $iPID = Run($cmd, "", @SW_HIDE, $STDOUT_CHILD)
   ProcessWaitClose($iPID)
   Local $output = StdoutRead($iPID)
   Return $output
EndFunc

 

Edited February 19, 2021 by mikell

[Nine]

I have the same issue as you OP.  Didn't find a way to make it work. But gladly, most of the site works well with InetGet and InetRead.

[AttilaP]

Thank you for your suggestions!

I have to use GET and POST, so it seems curl might be able to do the job... But it does not handle the cookies like WinHTTP does. If I have to handle the cookies manually, that's really a headache...

[TheXman]

@AttilaP

Is the COM return code 0x80072F7D (Error 12157), 0x80072F8F (Error 12175), or some other code?  The possible root causes and resolutions of the issue is dependent on the specific return code.

Edited February 19, 2021 by TheXman

[AttilaP]

It is 0x80072F7D

[TheXman]

Good, that one is easier to resolve.

Attached are the registry keys that are updated by the MS EasyFix app.  These keys assume that the host machine is Win7 x64.  It is a .reg file so, after confirming the values are the ones you want, you can merge them by double-clicking on the file or you can manually confirm the values of each key.  Can you see if these entries work for you?

 

 

 

Edited February 26, 2022 by TheXman

[mLipok]

We had similar issue and we have it fixed, do not remeber how but I think that I have solution in my office. I would be able to check at monday.

[AttilaP]

1 hour ago, TheXman said:

Good, that one is easier to resolve.

Attached are the registry keys that are updated by the MS EasyFix app.  These keys assume that the host machine is Win7 x64.  It is a .reg file so, after confirming the values are the ones you want, you can merge them by double-clicking on the file or you can manually confirm the values of each key.  Can you see if these entries work for you?

 

 

TLS Fix x64.reg 2.03 kB · 3 downloads

Unfortunately this fix did not help, the result is the same. 

[TheXman]

Can you post your script or at least an example that produces the error?

Also, have you tried rerunning the standalone Windows Update?  I have also attached the original, signed, EasyFix from Microsoft just in case it did more than set the registry keys that I listed.

The EasyFix needs to be run after the Windows Update.

 

 

Edited February 26, 2022 by TheXman

[Nine]

FWIW, the fix from TheXman solves it on my Win7 comp using the code from this topic (both http and https) :

https://www.autoitscript.com/forum/topic/205127-i-have-a-problem-with-winhttp/?tab=comments#comment-1475085

 

[mikell]

2 hours ago, AttilaP said:

curl might be able to do the job... But it does not handle the cookies

It does ! just read the documentation 

[mLipok]

On 2/19/2021 at 5:40 PM, mLipok said:

We had similar issue and we have it fixed, do not remeber how but I think that I have solution in my office. I would be able to check at monday.

https://docs.microsoft.com/pl-pl/dotnet/framework/network-programming/tls

Quote

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\.NETFramework\v2.0.50727] "SystemDefaultTlsVersions"=dword:00000001 "SchUseStrongCrypto"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\.NETFramework\v4.0.30319] "SystemDefaultTlsVersions"=dword:00000001 "SchUseStrongCrypto"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\.NETFramework\v2.0.50727] "SystemDefaultTlsVersions"=dword:00000001 "SchUseStrongCrypto"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\.NETFramework\v4.0.30319] "SystemDefaultTlsVersions"=dword:00000001 "SchUseStrongCrypto"=dword:00000001

 

I was able to find some helpfull information today.
I think that there was also other... I will try to find tomorrow.

TLS_SSL_NetFramework.reg

Edited February 21, 2021 by mLipok

[AttilaP]

We tried all registry patches, without result.

BUT!

Nine's answer pushed me towards the solution: I tried the WinHTTP library. As I mentioned, I used ObjCreate("WinHttp.WinHttpRequest.5.1") to initiate the object, and the result was not working. While, using the WinHTTP library it works flawlessly, even without $WINHTTP_FLAG_SECURE flag (when it was set, nothing returned).

So, I've made a small function to be able to GET and POST to different webpages, which you can find here - might be useful for somebody in the future:

Global Const $USERAGENT = "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/84.0.4147.105 Safari/537.36"
Global $hOpen = _WinHttpOpen()

...

Func Call_HTTP($strBaseURL, $strURL, $strMode, $strData = '', $strContentType = '')
    Local $hConnect = _WinHttpConnect($hOpen, $strBaseURL)
    Local $hRequest = _WinHttpOpenRequest($hConnect, $strMode, $strURL)
    _WinHttpAddRequestHeaders($hRequest, "Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,image/avif,image/webp,image/apng,*/*;q=0.8,application/signed-exchange;v=b3;q=0.9")
    If $strContentType <> '' Then _WinHttpAddRequestHeaders($hRequest, "Content-Type: " & $strContentType)
    _WinHttpAddRequestHeaders($hRequest, "User-Agent: " & $USERAGENT)
    
    _WinHttpSendRequest($hRequest, Default, $strMode = 'POST' ? $strData : '')
    _WinHttpReceiveResponse($hRequest)
    Local $sReturned = ''
    If _WinHttpQueryDataAvailable($hRequest) Then
        Do
            $sReturned &= _WinHttpReadData($hRequest)
        Until @error
    EndIf
    Return $sReturned
EndFunc   ;==>Call_HTTP

Parameters:

$strBaseURL is the base URL, like "http://google.com"
$strURL is the rest of the URL (if any), like "/?q=test"
$strMode is either GET or POST
$strData is the data to be sent when it is a POST request
$strContentType is the Content-Type header

I know that CrackURL could have been used to split up the URL, but my old function was created like this already.

Thank you everybody, really, REALLY appreciated.

Edited February 23, 2021 by AttilaP