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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

#581

Post by rplnt »

trollied wrote: post #116
rplnt wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue with paying for youtube premium is that you are still left with tons of ads. Until YouTube themselves doesn't tackle this issue as it should I refuse to pay to see sligtly less ads.

I pay for YouTube premium and have never seen an ad. Not sure what's happening with you.

A lot of the videos I see have ads in them, section whith "this video is sponsored by this and that". That's definitely an ad. I would say most new (past few years) content by established channels has these. Some more obnoxious than others.

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

#582

Post by syntaxing »

figmert wrote: post #533
ajkblue wrote: post #28

This reminds me of a now-dockerized Privaxy, which is a UBlock-origin blocklist compatible MITM proxy. It’s crazy to see how many ads and tracking scripts are on smart products, especially my TV where so far in my testing it’s over 40% unnecessary traffic. Its been pretty fun to try and strip out ads on my smart-tv apps. https://github.com/deetungsten/webui-privaxy is the dockerized fork of https://github.com/Barre/p…

It took me entirely too long to understand that a dockerized fork meant that the gui has been replaced with a web gui.

Fork author here. It’s a bit more nuanced than that. The original version originally came with a webui that was removed upstream and replaced with a desktop app. The way it was written, there was some modification required to make with docker which was a popular request from the users. The desktop app isn’t dockerizable so this can’t be merged upstream.

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

#583

Post by userbinator »

scoopertrooper wrote: post #219
mrAssHat wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's impossible to google.

Didn't help that they spelled the name incorrectly, but I found it :D https://github.com/barre/privaxy

In this case "incorrectly" is what makes it possible to find it, search-engine-autocorrect-stupidity aside. The name is obviously a combination of privacy and proxy. There's another one called Privoxy which works on similar principles.

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

#584

Post by michaelmrose »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #512
notjoemama wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brilliant response and observations. I’m not sure I’d agree with this one tiny assertion though: “1.87MB is not that big“ I have lived in rural communities most of my life and unless I’m on my own Wi-Fi, this actually is a big file to download. Maybe they have a workaround for mobile? Mostly I just want to add that rural Wi-Fi still struggles with Web 2.0 architecture. More often we’re operating on 2-4G speeds. Altho…

It's a little weird on HN to see someone refer to "rural wifi". Unless you're talking about a relatively rare form of mesh networking, there's not really any such thing as rural wifi, at least not in the sense that its different from any other kind of wifi - a very local RF network designed to share an access point. I assume you're using wifi as a stand-in for "internet" or "broadband". 4G speeds are completely fine…

Having worked for an internet service provider its common for people to literally refer to their internet connection as their "wifi" and fail to differentiate between their network and their upstream connection or even fail to differentiate between more obvious categories of things like their computer being able to turn on and "the internet". Their mental model isn't a graph its an amorphous blob.

It's humorous if you ask them if they have a wire and wired device to test they frequently act as if you asking them if they have a vacuum tube or a teletype. Meanwhile they frequently struggle with wifi configuration problems with devices that are 3 feet from one another.

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

#585

Post by sgammon »

layer8 wrote: post #200
sgammon wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case since he mentions it's a "tree" of data (he means a "message"), it would be a sub-object that would become an initialized default. So there would be an "object" there, but it would have no "ads" array in it, or what not. Protobuf does this so you can do `deep.dotted.paths` and you won't get null exceptions (probably a side effect of starting partly in Java). The leaf fields end up as empty strings, `0`,…

The article actually shows a screenshot of the structure they are cutting off. I would think that a dummy object would be trivial to detect.

It would be like receiving `{ads: []}`. How do you distinguish between the case of having no ads to show, and someone tampering with the data?

Is it ever reasonable to assume you have a properly decoded empty array because a user tampered with it, instead of that being what the server gave back to you?

If you have to choose between (a) the app shutting down or (b) the user not seeing ads bc the ad array is empty, you are probably going to pick B.

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

#586

Post by sgammon »

layer8 wrote: post #202
sgammon wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyway, none of this would be a problem if the TLS tunnel broke because the cert failed to validate against an issuer pin shipped with the app.

Maybe the reason they don’t do this is that many enterprise networks break up TLS.

Good point, hadn't thought of that

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

#587

Post by yumraj »

Qs: to those who are running a MITM proxy

Is there no risk running an MITM proxy, even if self hosted, that can see all your financial and other important private communication?

I know a couple mentioned here are open source, but are they guaranteed to be safe? How do I know which one (s) are good to use and can be trusted.

I want to rub it based on this thread, but have the above concern.

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

#588

Post by sgammon »

michaelt wrote: post #126
fulafel wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's hoping that, if they do it, they'll start blocking corporate TLS mitm regimes too.

Blocking? Cloudflare provides corporate TLS MITM regimes.

"Corporate MITM" is built into the very idea of PKI. Running your own custom PKI is a completely valid way to operate a network. This is a feature because it allows anyone to establish their own trust tree, completely outside of the public certificate trust network.

"Regimes" sounds pejorative but in truth, companies have a duty and in many cases a legal obligation to protect their networks. Prima facie, I don't see any reason at all why interception of traffic in this circumstance is "bad," except maybe a potential for political misuse like any other written medium.

I actually think the reverse would be substantially worse: if _only_ the public trust chain was valid in major browsers, we would be completely hosed and there would be no distinguishing factor at all between remote attestation and trust.

Thus, corporate TLS interception is, at worst, a necessary byproduct of a very well chosen tradeoff.

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

#589

Post by sgammon »

cute_boi wrote: post #528
yukIttEft wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

layperson here: won't, say a banking app complain about the now new cert it deals with instead of the bank-cert?

most banks already do certificate pinning, even tho it is not necessary.

clearly it is necessary in some circumstances

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

#590

Post by hrrsn »

yumraj wrote: post #587

Qs: to those who are running a MITM proxy Is there no risk running an MITM proxy, even if self hosted, that can see all your financial and other important private communication? I know a couple mentioned here are open source, but are they guaranteed to be safe? How do I know which one (s) are good to use and can be trusted. I want to rub it based on this thread, but have the above concern.

If your root CA private key is compromised, there's a risk that a threat actor could generate certificates that your device will trust for any domain.

MITMProxy is a pretty well known and trusted open source project, but I wrote my own proxy to keep Apollo alive.

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