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Is a shorter solution possible? Is decompiling SWF and/or de-obfuscating Javascript really necessary? Years ago, I approached these sites like the author in t
by stabilo 11y ago
Is a shorter solution possible?
Is decompiling SWF and/or de-obfuscating Javascript really necessary?
Years ago, I approached these sites like the author in the blog post. I spent hours reading about Flash and figuring out the schemes websites used. I decompiled swf. I also tried rtmpdump, livestreamer and other all-in-one solutions. I used early youtube downloaders (clive, etc) and later quvi. I also used /dev/bpf to capture HTTP requests. I tried it all.
I can relate to what the author is trying to do. I never settle for "streaming". Download only.
However I found over the years either the websites have made things easier or I was simply trying too hard. Or maybe I just am not interested in the type of video that is served in this way. For some reason it takes much less effort now.
To make sure I am not imagining this, I decided to try one of the author's examples.
I chose projectfreetv.so
1. I followed a link on the main page for some TV show I have never seen.
2. I read the HTML.
3. I noticed /watch/?aff_id= URL's.
4. I chose the first one, 493165, and followed it.
5. I read the HTML.
6. I noticed a URL pointing to a website that serves TV shows and followed it.
7. I read the HTML.
8. I noticed a URL pointing to an MP4 file.
9. I downloaded the file.
I assume I got the TV episode on offer. The screen size is a little small but the file was about 89MB and appeared to be the full episode.
Total time: less than 10min
What did I use? sed, netcat, less and ftp for the download. The entire process is a one-liner.
If anyone has some more examples to try, please list them. I would welcome the challenge.
- Jonhoo 11y agoAuthor here: for some sites, that approach works well, and this is what I originally did (and why I decided to write streamsh in bash). Have a look in the "tricks" directory and you'll see some of the much simpler solutions that are tried first. However, an increasing number of sites try to hide the URL, and through increasingly complicated means. The article is about vidbull.com, but there are others. They often also layer multiple obfuscators (vidbull uses both JS obfuscation and URL encryption for example). While it's true you can get pretty far just by scanning for mp4s on some mirrors, they are becoming fewer and farther between.
- stabilo 11y agovidbull looks more like the old "file storage locker" sites that were popular before the megaupload crackdown. Isn't this the same content you can find using torrent sites? Is it likely that vidbull would have something for which no torrent would ever exist? Sorry for my ignorance.
- Jonhoo 11y agoNo no, there are torrents for all of these videos (at least usually). However, torrents are slightly less convenient in that you can't play the file until the download completes. For me personally it's also an upside that HTTP is easier to proxy, and there's no need to seed. That said, torrents will probably be a better solution for many people. If you're interested, I wrote a tool a while back that scanned torrent sites for the newest episode of a particular show and automatically downloaded and started the torrent: https://github.com/jonhoo/smore https://github.com/jonhoo/smore. No idea if it still works, but shouldn't be too hard to get it up and running again.