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I am using WURFL service to detect devices using user agent. I have got one weird user agent as follow:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows Phone 10.0; Android 4.2.1; Xbox; Xbox One) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/46.0.2486.0 Mobile Safari/537.36 Edge/13.10586

WURFL service detects this device as xbox and returns os as android which is invalid. I searched for xbox user agents. None of them contain Android.

Is above mentioned user agent invalid?

Is it not xbox, someone has just customized to look like xbox? I am confused.

Also, what is the best way/regex to check if a user agent is of xbox?

Any help is appreciated. Thank you in advance.

dhamu
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  • Possibility of someone running android on xbox cannot be ruled out. **Hackers** !! –  Feb 03 '16 at 21:13
  • @noob : Are you saying its a valid case where device is xbox and os is android? I am just trying to have a better idea. – dhamu Feb 03 '16 at 21:23
  • Yes ! It's possible. I checked the xbox `user agents` but none of them match yours. [Here are common xbox user agent strings.](http://whatsmyuseragent.com/Devices/XBox-User-Agent-Strings) –  Feb 03 '16 at 21:28
  • Yes. I checked the same link and a few more. None of them matches mine. That's why the question if my user agent is invalid. If yes, what's the best way to determine xbox user agents. – dhamu Feb 03 '16 at 21:32
  • I found a match. Added in my answer. –  Feb 03 '16 at 21:45

2 Answers2

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Okay here is the thing. The Microsoft Edge browser which is latest in line of mobile browsers developed by Microsoft uses the mentioned User-Agent to pose like an Android device.

So it might be a valid string. But numerous sources I checked doesn't involve Android as OS and Xbox as device in same string. So better not to trust such suspicious user agents.

Well to answer how to detect an xbox user agent string you will have to match xbox somewhere in it.

Here is the Wikipedia link to it's latest development.

  • Thanks a lot @noob for finding and sharing a link. Edge does send android in user agent , but for mobile , not for xbox. For xbox, it sends win 64 as os. I understood that it can send android, but the question still remain unanswered if above user agent is valid or not. Greatly appreciate your help. – dhamu Feb 03 '16 at 22:00
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I can see that WURFL detects this properly as an Xbox, but some of the virtual capabilities are getting confused when the UA is changed to say Android. We will investigate on where this UA originates from (is Microsoft allowing Xbox users to spoof the UA string?) and, if necessary, improve WURFL to properly detect this "device OS".

Disclosure: I'm the WURFL inventor and CTO of the company that offers WURFL commercially.

Thanks

Luca P.
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