A tool for recovering passwords from pixelized screenshots
1–10 of 130 posts
Re: A tool for recovering passwords from pixelized screenshots
#2Why is pixelation preferable to a big black obliterating box?
To me, it seems like a lot of wasted time and effort and potential arms race between encoders and decoders and the risk of being exposed when you could just put a big black box over whatever you wish to obscure.
Re: A tool for recovering passwords from pixelized screenshots
#3Why is pixelation preferable to a big black obliterating box? To me, it seems like a lot of wasted time and effort and potential arms race between encoders and decoders and the risk of being exposed when you could just put a big black box over whatever you wish to obscure.
It's not. There's never going to be a tool that does this with black bars.
The only benefit I can think of is legitimacy. Having something blurred there suggests that there was actually something there.
Re: A tool for recovering passwords from pixelized screenshots
#4Is "pixelized" the norm somewhere? I'm used to "pixelated."
Re: A tool for recovering passwords from pixelized screenshots
#5I found the author's blog post on LinkedIn more informative:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/recovering-passwords-from-pix...
Re: A tool for recovering passwords from pixelized screenshots
#6Why is pixelation preferable to a big black obliterating box? To me, it seems like a lot of wasted time and effort and potential arms race between encoders and decoders and the risk of being exposed when you could just put a big black box over whatever you wish to obscure.
Only reason I can think of: Pixelation has a more elegant touch than covering everything with a box (be it black, or some better suited color).
Took a while to convince people to not use a bit of gaussian blur, because it's insecure. Well, ready for round 2...
Re: A tool for recovering passwords from pixelized screenshots
#7Why is pixelation preferable to a big black obliterating box? To me, it seems like a lot of wasted time and effort and potential arms race between encoders and decoders and the risk of being exposed when you could just put a big black box over whatever you wish to obscure.
>Why is pixelation preferable to a big black obliterating box?
From a security perspective it has zero advantages, but I guess some people like the aesthetics?
>To me, it seems like a lot of wasted time and effort and potential arms race between encoders and decoders and the risk of being exposed when you could just put a big black box over whatever you wish to obscure.
There doesn't need to be an arms race, one can just erase whatever needed to be hid, put fake random text over it and then pixelate that. Ie., a prettier "black box" but still the same core method as a black box. In principle doesn't even need to be any more work, it'd be easy enough to throw together a simple "pixelate erase" script that'd take a selection, apply average solid color and random text over it, then pixelate the result all in one automatated step.
The problem is if some people think any modification of the original information is ever good enough. Anything based on the original could leak information, so need to erase and then apply any desired aesthetics afterward.
Re: A tool for recovering passwords from pixelized screenshots
#8Why is pixelation preferable to a big black obliterating box? To me, it seems like a lot of wasted time and effort and potential arms race between encoders and decoders and the risk of being exposed when you could just put a big black box over whatever you wish to obscure.
It's not. There's never going to be a tool that does this with black bars. The only benefit I can think of is legitimacy. Having something blurred there suggests that there was actually something there.
Yeah I think blurring is more aesthetic, and until recently was seemingly just as secure. It reminds me of how people have used the Photoshop swirl tool to obscure faces, but you could just use the swirl tool in the other direction to undo the effect.
Re: A tool for recovering passwords from pixelized screenshots
#9Why is pixelation preferable to a big black obliterating box? To me, it seems like a lot of wasted time and effort and potential arms race between encoders and decoders and the risk of being exposed when you could just put a big black box over whatever you wish to obscure.
Even big black boxes require some amount of skill.
https://twitter.com/Phthalaldehyde/status/133471474074092748...
Re: A tool for recovering passwords from pixelized screenshots
#10Why is pixelation preferable to a big black obliterating box? To me, it seems like a lot of wasted time and effort and potential arms race between encoders and decoders and the risk of being exposed when you could just put a big black box over whatever you wish to obscure.
This reminds of the Markup tool[1] on iPhone. People use it to redact from screenshots, but it was (is?) actually slightly transparent by default.
[1] https://9to5mac.com/2018/03/13/ios-markup-reveal-redact-sens...