Hi Ethical Hackers,

This is a very basic tutorial for absolute beginners who would like to work with the ShowIP FireFox Addon. So here we go:


INTRODUCTION

ShowIP is a Mozilla Firefox extension / add-on by Jan Dittmer. It shows the IP address of the current page in the browsers status bar as shown below:


HOW TO INSTALL SHOWIP

ShowIP is available for free download from https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/590/. Navigate to the above URL using your Firefox Mozilla Web browser and click on the Install now button as shown below:


The Software Installation window will appear. Click on the Install Now button. (Refer figure below)


The add-on will be automatically installed to your browser as shown below:


Click on the Restart Firefox button to restart the browser. After the restart, you can see the IP address of the site opened at the right side of the Firefox Status bar. You can also verify add-on installation by going to Tools menu. An additional menu item for ShowIP should be listed there as shown:


MORE ON SHOW IP

ShowIP addon also allows sending custom queries to various databases / services by IP and Hostname. By right clicking on the IP address in the status bar, the IP address can be send to various services for custom queries. For example, righ click on the IP and the click on the whois.sc option will send the website IP to http://whois.domaintools.com/. The result will be shown in a new browswer tab (by default. This configuration can be changed). There are various other options available under this category as shown below:


By left clicking on the IP address in the status bar of your Mozilla Firefox, the host name of the web page can be send to various services for information retrieval. For example, left click on the IP and then click on the netcraft option will send the hostname to http://uptime.netcraft.com which will display the Operating System, web Server and Hosting History for the host name in a new tab. The other options available under this category are shown below:


By default, the IPv6 is displayed in Green color (#00FF00) and IPv4 address is displayed in Red color (#FF0000)

SHOWIP SETTINGS

To configure ShowIP, click on Tools then clicking on ShowIP menu item. The ShowIP Settings window will be displayed as shown below:


Services Tab

The Services tab can be used to add new entries to the ShowIP lists / options. Lets take the example of adding an entry to the ShowIP.

Example 1 - Adding the ClustrMap services to the ShowIP listings.

ClustrMap (http://clustrmaps.com)

ClustrMap is a combined hit counter and geographic visualization tool that provides HTML code which you can copy into a web page. The HTML includes a link to a thumbnail map image generated by ClustrMap. Depending on the web site traffice, the map image shows the locations of all the visitors to the webpage. Clicking on the thumbnail map image reveals a larger world map display.

By adding ClustrMap to the list of options, you can check whether the site is registered with ClustrMap and if registered, the geographical locations of its visitors.

Steps to follow

• Click on Tools
• Then click on ShowIP to open the ShowIP settings Window.
• In the text box named "Title" Enter the tile to be shown in the ShowIP option lists. In this case enter, ClustrMap
• In the texst box named "URL" enter the following:
  http://www2.clustrmaps.com/counter/maps.php?url=http://www.#D#
  
  Note: Use ### as wildcard in the URL for the current IP or Hostname, depending on the context. ### represents the full URL, #D# just the domain name. URLs starting with ! are assumed to be local programs and called with the current IP or hostname as the first parameter.
  
• Select the Check-box labeled Host. This is done to categorize the entries under the Host category (left click category)
• Click on the command Button "Add". (See the figure below)

• Finally click on OK button to close the ShowIP Settings window.

Now click on the IP and you can see the new entry ClustrMap.


User Interface Tab

The User Interface tab is used to configure miscellaneous options as shown below:


The various groupings are discussed below:

Open queries in

• Open queries in new tab - This option, when selected opens the queries in a new tab.
• Open queries in new background tab - When this option is selected, the new queries will be opened in the background as a new tab. When unchecked, the new tab will be opened and will be displayed to the user.

Colors

The color section is used to change the color of the displayed IP.

IPv4 Address Style

IPv4 Address Style options are used to display the IP addresses in various formats like Decimal, Octal, Hex or DWord

CONCLUSION

ShowIP is a very handy tool for all internet users. The ability to customize it for our need makes it a mandatory weapon in the arsenal of any Penetration Tester and Security Administrator.

Hope this was useful and information. Comments and additional notes are always welcome.

Firefox is a must have for the ethical hacker. Nice post with pics by the way.

VERY helpful and well articulated, thanks.

Thanks, I am literally just beginning in hacking and I found this tutorial to be very helpful.