[Patreon] Cloudflare Challenge - 403 Forbidden error

[MarqFJA87]

Today Patreon seems impossible to download from with gallery-dl, with every attempt returning a 403 error citing a Cloudflare challenge. Here's the debug log.

D:\Programs\Bulk downloaders\gallery-dl>gallery-dl https://www.patreon.com/posts/casual-artoria-112831101 --verbose
[gallery-dl][debug] Version 1.27.4
[gallery-dl][debug] Python 3.10.0 - Windows-10-10.0.19045-SP0
[gallery-dl][debug] requests 2.32.2 - urllib3 2.2.1
[gallery-dl][debug] Configuration Files ['%USERPROFILE%\\gallery-dl\\config.json']
[gallery-dl][debug] Starting DownloadJob for 'https://www.patreon.com/posts/casual-artoria-112831101'
[patreon][debug] Using PatreonPostExtractor for 'https://www.patreon.com/posts/casual-artoria-112831101'
[patreon][debug] TLS 1.2 disabled.
[urllib3.connectionpool][debug] Starting new HTTPS connection (1): www.patreon.com:443
[urllib3.connectionpool][debug] https://www.patreon.com:443 "GET /posts/casual-artoria-112831101 HTTP/1.1" 403 None
[patreon][warning] Cloudflare challenge
[patreon][error] HttpError: '403 Forbidden' for 'https://www.patreon.com/posts/casual-artoria-112831101'

[conkerts]

I'm having the issue as well.
because of the [gallery-dl][debug] requests 2.32.2 - urllib3 2.2.1
I thought it might be the requests thing like last time, but seems not. #5624 (comment)

I tried 3 different versions that I got, and all similar issues.
Once with the current release.
Then with my old one:

[gallery-dl][debug] Version 1.26.9 - Executable
[gallery-dl][debug] Python 3.8.10 - Windows-10-10.0.19045
[gallery-dl][debug] requests 2.31.0 - urllib3 2.1.0
[gallery-dl][debug] Configuration Files []
[gallery-dl][debug] Starting DownloadJob 
....
[patreon][warning] Cloudflare challenge
[patreon][error] HttpError: '403 Forbidden'  ...

Same for the nightly from yesterday, tho my requests version is different

[gallery-dl][debug] Version 1.27.5-dev:2024.09.27 - Executable (dev/windows)
[gallery-dl][debug] Python 3.12.6 - Windows-10-10.0.19045-SP0
[gallery-dl][debug] requests 2.31.0 - urllib3 2.2.3

[BoostHellSix66]

I opened and then closed an issue thinking the problem was on me ( #6239 ), but the issue has occurred several times after.

From what I've noticed, If I try to download and get a Cloudflare challenge and then wait ~12 hrs, reattempt the download, it works. I don't know why this works, but It's worked several times now.

[MarqFJA87]

Well that solution hasn't worked for me, so it's a mystery why it's working for you. What's going on here?

[mikf]

What's going on here?

Not everyone lives in the same place on this world. Cloudflare treats requests from different IP ranges differently.

Anyway, you could try changing/disabling the default "browser": "firefox" and/or "tls12": false settings. Using custom headers and ciphers could also help. Basically anything that changes the request "fingerprints".

[BoostHellSix66]

Thank you for the info on this issue.

Admittedly, I am not familiar with how Cloudflare functions at all, or how it uses digital fingerprints to authenticate. How would I go about, or start, trying to enable TLS1.2 or change my fingerprint through custom headers or ciphers?