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Block YouTube ads on AppleTV by decrypting and stripping ads from Profobuf

ericdraken.com

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Re: Block YouTube ads on AppleTV by decrypting and stripping ads from Profobuf

#171

Post by riidom »

vintermann wrote: post #101
omnicognate wrote: post #29

The only alternatives to a service like youtube showing people ads are for its users to pay for it, for it to be funded through donations, for it to be run by the government and paid for through taxation or for it not to exist. I prefer the first or second approaches and Youtube is unusual among social media sites in actually giving me the first option. So I happily pay for premium and while I'd rather that were the…

By the same logic, it's irresponsible to watch ads and not buy the products. That's after all what keeps the wheels turning. I remember I had this discussion after a school political debate in the 90s, with (adult) actual politicians. Textbooks at the time were not publicly funded, and naturally the textbook companies jacked up prices for their captive audience forced to buy their books. This one party had the "brill…

This happened for real, actually, at least some german science fiction publishing houses did that. They would "insert" a page into the book, which picks up the story in some really cheesy way and then bends in within two sentences towards the main character needing a quick soup now (the advertise was for soup always, they just had that one sponsor apparently).

See here (picture gallery): https://johannes.freudendahl.net/2019/01/werbung-in-romanen/

The introduction goes like: "Only Kirk kept helping himself, because he was convinced he would need strength for the upcoming events." and then below the black bars the actual ad: "The reader should do same bla e.g. soup bla takes just 5 minutes etc"

Just some anecdote.

Re: Block YouTube ads on AppleTV by decrypting and stripping ads from Profobuf

#172

Post by userbinator »

lloeki wrote: post #118
month13 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They train you to do this when they volume boost the ads to blow your eardrums out.

Over here volume boosting is illegal, so instead they DSP ad audio to maximise envelope across all frequency bands. Since ad sections are your typical break from a program to get to the fridge or toilet or whatever, the DSP transform makes sure you still hear the ads and pick up dialog even when far away from the TV. Downmixing audio so that you can both hear dialogue and not lose eardrums to music and 'splosions see…

Yes, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_range_compression#Mark...

Re: Block YouTube ads on AppleTV by decrypting and stripping ads from Profobuf

#174

Post by sgammon »

layer8 wrote: post #151
sgammon wrote: post #6

that's not really a "flaw" in protobuf; the protobuf is Working As Intended by decoding the field in a different place when you modify it. i am not sure how one could possibly characterize that as a "flaw," since protobuf is a field-numeric length-prefixed protocol in the first place. it makes a (reasonable) assumption that bytes won't be messed with over the wire, leaving integrity to the reader, so even if this _wa…

I don’t know how mandatory fields work in Protobuf, but to mitigate the attack, Google’s YouTube client could treat the field as mandatory and refuse service when it finds the field to be missing or having a default value.

Protocol buffers don't always support "default" values, because certain types will include a protocol-default value. For example, a `bool` which is not present will return `false` instead of say, a nil type.

Required fields were a feature of Proto2. In proto3 syntax (latest), the required field concept was dropped because it caused issues with protocol evolution and was easy to misuse.

In essence, because of the backward and forward compatibility guarantees supported by protobuf, a "required" field must be required for the entire lifecycle of the protocol.

For these reasons and others, protobuf takes a stance where unrecognized fields are not necessarily errors. If it took a strict stance and failed in this condition, the presence of new fields in an "evolved" protocol would be an error which would break forward compatibility; old clients would not be able to communicate with new servers, and vice versa.

Protobuf guarantees that new fields will not break forward or backward compatibility.

This is why parsing unknown fields in protobuf is a feature, working as intended, not a flaw. In some language SDKs for protobuf I believe you can customize this behavior but it really isn't a good idea.

This is also why the app authors might want to consider a hash instead. Tampering with the payload would break the hash, and without the schema, the author would not necessarily know where the hash was situated in the payload to fix it, or even that one is present at all. The complexity of recalculating the hash (assuming they find it) vastly multiplies the attacker's burden at little cost to the application; adding a few rounds and a salt, for instance, would make this kind of attack significantly harder to pull off.

It's not perfect security, but it would certainly be better.

Re: Block YouTube ads on AppleTV by decrypting and stripping ads from Profobuf

#175

Post by jasode »

ThePowerOfFuet wrote: post #135
jjallen wrote: post #122

I just subscribe to YouTube premium to support my favorite application out there. I learn so much from the people who spend hours and hours making videos every month that I am more than happy to pay a measly $13 or whatever it is every month to YouTube.

Nebula sounds like a better fit.

>Nebula sounds like a better fit.

No, paying Nebula as an alternative to paying Youtube doesn't work for many viewers because most creators who create good content are not on Nebula. E.g. Many popular channels with worthwhile info such as Applied Science, Technology Connections, 3Blue1Brown, etc are not on Nebula.

Also, many people who use Youtube for learning DIY repair, hobbies, coding, etc and Nebula doesn't really cater to those genres. E.g. I watched some videos about configuring Unifi networks and then some tutorials on installing some flooring. These types of videos are not on Nebula's platform.

There is a huge variety and scope of educational material on Youtube and platforms like Nebula/CuriosityStream only have a fraction of that.

Re: Block YouTube ads on AppleTV by decrypting and stripping ads from Profobuf

#176

Post by laserlight »

izacus wrote: post #82
rightbyte wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is fair to not want pay enshittification tax to rent seekers. The said ability exists on the YT website if you use desktop mode on the mobile browser.

Asking you to pay for service costs and content is not rent seeking. That's not what that phrase means.

Given that YouTube is a monopoly, I would call it rent seeking.

Re: Block YouTube ads on AppleTV by decrypting and stripping ads from Profobuf

#177

Post by Ntrails »

joosters wrote: post #97
Ntrails wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my household growing up the ads were almost always muted as soon as the roll started. I always found it bizarre that other people did not do the same

That always felt counterproductive to me. I knew people who did this and they still stared at the adverts. In fact, without the sound, you are probably focusing more on the ads, trying to figure out what is going on.

I would agree, the whole point was to enable conversation without the distraction of the ad sounds. If you're gonna watch the damned things anyway I'm not sure it helped

Re: Block YouTube ads on AppleTV by decrypting and stripping ads from Profobuf

#179

Post by tinus_hn »

jjallen wrote: post #122

I just subscribe to YouTube premium to support my favorite application out there. I learn so much from the people who spend hours and hours making videos every month that I am more than happy to pay a measly $13 or whatever it is every month to YouTube.

A problem with paying is that you have to be logged on so you can’t avoid being tracked and having every video you ever watch linked to you for all eternity.

Re: Block YouTube ads on AppleTV by decrypting and stripping ads from Profobuf

#180

Post by Shekelphile »

ohgodplsno wrote: post #159
moonchrome wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No that's what you get when you're the product by being a free user. Paid service relationship works just fine for me - Google isn't ideal but YouTube is one of my main content sources + YouTube music for my family for slightly more than the price of Spotify family subscription - yeah it's an easy choice. Spotify suggestions and playlists weren't a seller feature for me for years. Maybe I'm missing out on a few podca…

No, Google will keep fucking you over and destroying the Internet, whether you pay or not. Not to mention the fact that what they pay out to creators is absolutely pathetic. Go find their Patreon, their Ko-fi, hell their paypal, anything but giving Google 13 bucks. Adblocking Google is morally right.

> Adblocking Google is morally right.

All ads should be blocked. I do not consume ads, and am not interested in paying a ransom to hide them.

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