Why does chrome send browsers like AppleWebKit/537.36 in the user agent header?

510 Asked by Amitjaisawal in Cyber Security , Asked on Mar 29, 2022

I am using Chrome in linux with Version 51.0.2704.63 (64-bit). I recorded a HTTP request of Chrome and here is part of the recording: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/51.0.2704.63 Safari/537.36 Why does Chrome send four browsers in the user-agent field? Is this a countermeasure to obfuscate the browser version?

Answered by Amit raj

Presumably you mean the following four:

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64)

AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko)

Chrome/51.0.2704.63

Safari/537.36

most Web browsers use a User-Agent string value as follows:

Mozilla/[version] ([system and browser information]) [platform] ([platform details]) [extensions].

Mozilla is a byproduct of browser wars.

AppleWebKit/537.36 is the platform used by your browser.

Chrome/51.0.2704.63 is your browser

Safari/537.36 was added for historic reasons, where Safari was treated differently. You may wish to also read this history.

Why does chrome send browsers like AppleWebKit/537.36 in the user agent header?

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