I went completely daft this week and broke my months-long Twitter break due to the domestic terror event in my nation’s capitol. I’ll likely be resuming the break starting today.

Whilst keeping up with the final descent of the U.S. into a fully failed state, I also noticed that a debate from months ago on CRAN URL checks was still going strong.

I briefly chimed in those months ago and this week on the dangers of short URLs (which was not exactly the core topic of the debate which centered around HTTP URL redirects which is a feature of the protocol that URL shorteners happen to take advantage of).

Short URLs make it easier to type a URL out or remember a URL (if you can still get a decent, short keyword to use after the /) but they’re dangerous. In case you’re one of the R folks who challenge my security chops, perhaps you’ll believe Bruce.

NOTE: Regular ol’ URLs can be, and are dangerous, too, especially if they’re used in an http:// context vs an https:// context or run by daft folks who think they’re capable of making a system fully impervious to attackers.

The pandemic has made “cyber” fairly hectic, so my plan to wrap up a safety checker and local package URLs re-writer into a small, usable tool/package has no ETA on completion. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t gain visibility into the number, types, and safety of URLs in your locally installed packages.

The code below has exposition in the comments – and you can find it here as well — so I’ll close with it vs my usual “FIN”.

Stay safe out there, folks; and — to my not-so-‘United’-after-all States readers — stay strong! The nightmare of the last four years is almost over (though the cleanup — now both physical and metaphorical — is going to take a long time).

library(urltools)
library(stringi)
library(tidyverse)
# we're also using {clipr} and {tools} but via ::: and ::

# fairly comprehensive list of URL shorteners
shorteners <- read_lines("https://github.com/sambokai/ShortURL-Services-List/raw/master/shorturl-services-list.txt")

# opaque function baked into {tools}
# NOTE: this can take a while
db <- tools:::url_db_from_installed_packages(rownames(installed.packages()), verbose = TRUE)

as_tibble(db) %>% 
  distinct() %>%  # yep, even w/in a pkg there may be dups from ^^
  mutate(
    scheme = scheme(URL), # https or not
    dom = domain(URL)     # need this later to be able to compute apex domain
  )  %>% 
  filter(
    dom != "..", # prbly legit since it will be a relative "go up one directory" 
    !is.na(dom)  # the {tools} url_db_from_installed_packages() is not perfect
  ) %>% 
  bind_cols(
    suffix_extract(.$dom) # break them all down into component atoms
  ) %>% 
  select(-dom) %>% # this is now 'host' from ^^
  mutate(
    apex = sprintf("%s.%s", domain, suffix) # apex domain
  ) %>% 
  mutate(
    is_short = (host %in% shorteners) | (apex %in% shorteners) # does it use a shortener?
  ) -> db

db
## # A tibble: 12,623 x 9
##    URL        Parent    scheme host  subdomain domain suffix apex  is_short
##    <chr>      <chr>     <chr>  <chr> <chr>     <chr>  <chr>  <chr> <lgl>   
##  1 https://g… albersus… https  gith… NA        github com    gith… FALSE   
##  2 https://g… albersus… https  gith… NA        github com    gith… FALSE   
##  3 https://w… AnomalyD… https  www.… www       usenix org    usen… FALSE   
##  4 https://w… AnomalyD… https  www.… www       jstor  org    jsto… FALSE   
##  5 https://w… AnomalyD… https  www.… www       usenix org    usen… FALSE   
##  6 https://w… AnomalyD… https  www.… www       jstor  org    jsto… FALSE   
##  7 https://g… AnomalyD… https  gith… NA        github com    gith… FALSE   
##  8 https://g… AnomalyD… https  gith… NA        github com    gith… FALSE   
##  9 https://g… AnomalyD… https  gith… NA        github com    gith… FALSE   
## 10 https://g… AnomalyD… https  gith… NA        github com    gith… FALSE   
## # … with 12,613 more rows

# what packages do i have installed that use short URLS?
# a nice thing to do would be to file a PR to these authors

filter(db, is_short) %>% 
  select(
    URL,
    Parent,
    scheme
  )
## # A tibble: 5 x 3
##   URL                         Parent                   scheme
##   <chr>                       <chr>                    <chr> 
## 1 https://goo.gl/5KBjL5       fpp2/man/goog.Rd         https 
## 2 http://bit.ly/2016votecount geofacet/man/election.Rd http  
## 3 http://bit.ly/SnLi6h        knitr/man/knit.Rd        http  
## 4 https://bit.ly/magickintro  magick/man/magick.Rd     https 
## 5 http://bit.ly/2UaiYbo       ssh/doc/intro.html       http  

# what protocols are in use? (you'll note that some are borked and
# others got mangled by the {tools} function)

count(db, scheme, sort=TRUE)
## # A tibble: 5 x 2
##   scheme     n
##   <chr>  <int>
## 1 https  10007
## 2 http    2498
## 3 NA       113
## 4 ftp        4
## 5 `https     1

# what are the most used top-level sites?

count(db, host, sort=TRUE) %>% 
  mutate(pct = n/sum(n))
## # A tibble: 1,108 x 3
##    host                      n     pct
##    <chr>                 <int>   <dbl>
##  1 docs.aws.amazon.com    3859 0.306  
##  2 github.com             2954 0.234  
##  3 cran.r-project.org      450 0.0356 
##  4 en.wikipedia.org        220 0.0174 
##  5 aws.amazon.com          204 0.0162 
##  6 doi.org                 181 0.0143 
##  7 wikipedia.org           132 0.0105 
##  8 developers.google.com   114 0.00903
##  9 stackoverflow.com       101 0.00800
## 10 gitlab.com               86 0.00681
## # … with 1,098 more rows

# same as ^^ but apex

count(db, apex, sort=TRUE) %>% 
  mutate(pct = n/sum(n)) 
## # A tibble: 743 x 3
##    apex                  n     pct
##    <chr>             <int>   <dbl>
##  1 amazon.com         4180 0.331  
##  2 github.com         2997 0.237  
##  3 r-project.org       563 0.0446 
##  4 wikipedia.org       352 0.0279 
##  5 doi.org             221 0.0175 
##  6 google.com          179 0.0142 
##  7 tidyverse.org       151 0.0120 
##  8 r-lib.org           137 0.0109 
##  9 rstudio.com         117 0.00927
## 10 stackoverflow.com   102 0.00808
## # … with 733 more rows

# See all the eavesdroppable, interceptable, 
# content-mutable-by-evil-MITM-network-operator URLs
# A nice thing to do would be to fix these and issue PRs

filter(db, scheme == "http") %>% 
  select(URL, Parent)
## # A tibble: 2,498 x 2
##    URL                                                 Parent              
##    <chr>                                               <chr>               
##  1 http://www.winfield.demon.nl                        antiword/DESCRIPTION
##  2 http://github.com/ropensci/antiword/issues          antiword/DESCRIPTION
##  3 http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/code/anytime.html      anytime/DESCRIPTION 
##  4 http://arrayhelpers.r-forge.r-project.org/          arrayhelpers/DESCRI…
##  5 http://arrow.apache.org/blog/2019/01/25/r-spark-im… arrow/doc/arrow.html
##  6 http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/API/RES… aws.s3/man/accelera…
##  7 http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/API/RES… aws.s3/man/accelera…
##  8 http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/dev/acl… aws.s3/man/acl.Rd   
##  9 http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/API/RES… aws.s3/man/bucket_e…
## 10 http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/API/RES… aws.s3/man/bucketli…
## # … with 2,488 more rows

# find the abusers of "http" URLs

filter(db, scheme == "http") %>% 
  select(URL, Parent) %>% 
  mutate(
    pkg = stri_match_first_regex(Parent, "(^[^/]+)")[,2]
  ) %>% 
  count(pkg, sort=TRUE)
## # A tibble: 265 x 2
##    pkg                        n
##    <chr>                  <int>
##  1 paws.security.identity   258
##  2 paws.management          152
##  3 XML                      129
##  4 paws.analytics            78
##  5 stringi                   70
##  6 paws                      57
##  7 RCurl                     51
##  8 igraph                    49
##  9 base                      47
## 10 aws.s3                    44
## # … with 255 more rows

# send all the apex domains to the clipboard

clipr::write_clip(unique(db$apex))

# go here to paste them into the domain search box
# most domain/URL checker APIs aren't free for more 
# than a cpl dozen URLs/domains

browseURL("https://www.bulkblacklist.com")

# paste what you clipped into the box and wait a while