4 ms·

Nice idea! Looks like spaces are preserved, and the bar lengths seem to match the world length. Is that the case? I didn't measure it precisely and didn't chec

Nice idea! Looks like spaces are preserved, and the bar lengths seem to match the world length. Is that the case? I didn't measure it precisely and didn't check the source code. If so you might want to add some random noise. Sometimes it might be possible to reconstruct parts of the text just based on the word lengths.

Vinnl 4y ago
Yep, really all it does is change the font! And blur images that have alt texts, which supposedly can also be reversible. Probably best not to use it for classified government docs :)
- jodrellblank 4y ago
  In FireFox people can get a similar effect with F12 -> Style Editor -> * {font-family:wingdings !important;} Or in Chrome, F12 -> Elements -> Styles on the right -> Fight with Chrome's interface.
  - csunbird 4y ago
    Windings do have 1:1 mapping between characters and icons, so that would be easily reversible.
  - Vinnl 4y ago
    Yeah, the extension mostly adds an easy button and keyboard shortcut to inject roughly those styles: https://gitlab.com/vincenttunru/obfuscate/-/blob/main/src/obfuscate.css https://gitlab.com/vincenttunru/obfuscate/-/blob/main/src/ob...
  - breakingcups 4y ago
    Surely wingdings are reversible?
    - amlib 4y ago
      Maybe a font with just tofus would work... like a reverse Noto Sans. Ain't nobody gonna reverse that :)
    - jodrellblank 4y ago
      I tried googling "black bar font" to find what the extension dev is using without downloading the extension, but gave up when I saw the Google results and realised how unlikely I am to find "font which doesn't need downloading and installing or hosting which renders normal characters as black bars".
      - Macha 4y ago
        The linked tweet indicates "flow circular" is one such font. It probably does need installation or hosting though.
      - Vinnl 4y ago
        As the sibling comment mentioned, it's Flow [1] [2], which has Block, Circular and Rounded variants. Elsewhere people also mentioned the Redacted font as a usable alternative [3] [4]. Both are available on Google Fonts. [1] https://gitlab.com/vincenttunru/obfuscate/-/blob/2ada3be505990ea24866f047bc583ce62c5d7ad6/src/obfuscate.css#L7 https://gitlab.com/vincenttunru/obfuscate/-/blob/2ada3be5059... [2] https://github.com/HYPD/flow-typeface https://github.com/HYPD/flow-typeface [3] https://gitlab.com/vincenttunru/obfuscate/-/issues/2 https://gitlab.com/vincenttunru/obfuscate/-/issues/2 [4] https://github.com/christiannaths/redacted-font https://github.com/christiannaths/redacted-font
  - bryans 4y ago
    I get that you were trying to be amusing with the Chrome comment, but in case you weren't actually aware, you only need to push the plus icon to insert a new style. It's the exact same number of clicks to accomplish that task in both browsers.
    - jodrellblank 4y ago
      I was aware because I clicked plus[1] and pressed ctrl-v to put my firefox line in. And it broke because Chrome is "being helpful" by forcing structure in the UI, so it instantly turned into a lot of crossed out lines with yellow warning triangles, and there's there's no visible delete option, no context menu delete, it doesn't respond to the delete key, and Chrome's F12 is just so much more user-hostile than FireFox every time I touch it, like they're kinda forced to have one so people can develop websites I guess, but they'd intensely rather nobody had a good time because that's a potential loophole people could use to remove adverts. Compare that to FireFox which just has a text box and you can type into it, or delete out of it. [1] with that delightful UX where it's /invisible/ until you wave the magic cursor around in the right place.
      - bryans 4y ago
        > with that delightful UX where it's /invisible/ until you wave the magic cursor around in the right place. There is a button at the top of the editor, to the right of the filter input. The buttons that show up on hover are for inserting the new style at a specific position in the cascade, if needed -- but that's a rarer occurrence, which is why it's not visible by default. > And it broke because Chrome is "being helpful" by forcing structure in the UI, so it instantly turned into a lot of crossed out lines with yellow warning triangles, and there's there's no visible delete option, no context menu delete, it doesn't respond to the delete key I agree that one should be able to paste any CSS block or declaration and expect the style editor to parse it. But it's also worth keeping in mind that the only difference in this particular situation is pasting the declaration instead of the surrounding block, and you'd get the results you're after. Chromium's dev tools are definitely not perfect, but I think Firefox's method is much more cumbersome from a developer's perspective.
  - javajosh 4y ago
    You could also use a "redacted" font like https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Redacted+Script https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Redacted+Script.
mkoryak 4y ago
If someone is going to reconstruct words in your screenshots, then you got problems that aren't going to be solved by any plugins
- zeronine 4y ago
  please elaborate
  - leokennis 4y ago
    Anyone who has the time and means to reconstruct/deduce the words on your obfuscated screenshot based on the length of the blocks that this extension produces, will very likely have way more efficient means to spy on you anyway.
    - pvg 4y ago
      This isn't really true, random OSINT enthusiasts regularly do this sort of reconstruction on twitter.
tete 4y ago
I assume that it's probably not meant to rely upon with your life or something. After all what if there missed text in pictures or other subtle things that could be deduced from screenshot that you either don't notice or even know about. Maybe that's something that should be mentioned in the description though, just in case.
kevincox 4y ago
Yup. It would be better to just replace the text with randomly sized bars of the same number of lines. You can have fun playing with the algorithm to come up with something that looks vaguely english-like. And the blur for images isn't great. It may be better to just use a black box there. Or maybe pick a single colour from the image or something like that.
- matt_heimer 4y ago
  Agree with the randomizing of word length. How about also having a choice in obfuscation mode? * Government Mode - Solid black bars so it looks like everything has been redacted. * UX Placeholder Mode - Lighter bars that are a blend of the font color and background color * Lipsum Mode - Replace text with a libsum generator that will truncate to similar size text.
  - blincoln 4y ago
    I came to this thread to suggest what you've labelled "Lipsum Mode", because it would preserve the typography style of the page, among other things. I like your other two as well.
    - Vinnl 4y ago
      Good idea, logged here: https://gitlab.com/vincenttunru/obfuscate/-/issues/5 https://gitlab.com/vincenttunru/obfuscate/-/issues/5

Vinnl 4y ago

Yep, really all it does is change the font! And blur images that have alt texts, which supposedly can also be reversible. Probably best not to use it for classified government docs :)

jodrellblank 4y ago
In FireFox people can get a similar effect with F12 -> Style Editor -> * {font-family:wingdings !important;} Or in Chrome, F12 -> Elements -> Styles on the right -> Fight with Chrome's interface.
- csunbird 4y ago
  Windings do have 1:1 mapping between characters and icons, so that would be easily reversible.
- Vinnl 4y ago
  Yeah, the extension mostly adds an easy button and keyboard shortcut to inject roughly those styles: https://gitlab.com/vincenttunru/obfuscate/-/blob/main/src/obfuscate.css https://gitlab.com/vincenttunru/obfuscate/-/blob/main/src/ob...
- breakingcups 4y ago
  Surely wingdings are reversible?
  - amlib 4y ago
    Maybe a font with just tofus would work... like a reverse Noto Sans. Ain't nobody gonna reverse that :)
  - jodrellblank 4y ago
    I tried googling "black bar font" to find what the extension dev is using without downloading the extension, but gave up when I saw the Google results and realised how unlikely I am to find "font which doesn't need downloading and installing or hosting which renders normal characters as black bars".
    - Macha 4y ago
      The linked tweet indicates "flow circular" is one such font. It probably does need installation or hosting though.
    - Vinnl 4y ago
      As the sibling comment mentioned, it's Flow [1] [2], which has Block, Circular and Rounded variants. Elsewhere people also mentioned the Redacted font as a usable alternative [3] [4]. Both are available on Google Fonts. [1] https://gitlab.com/vincenttunru/obfuscate/-/blob/2ada3be505990ea24866f047bc583ce62c5d7ad6/src/obfuscate.css#L7 https://gitlab.com/vincenttunru/obfuscate/-/blob/2ada3be5059... [2] https://github.com/HYPD/flow-typeface https://github.com/HYPD/flow-typeface [3] https://gitlab.com/vincenttunru/obfuscate/-/issues/2 https://gitlab.com/vincenttunru/obfuscate/-/issues/2 [4] https://github.com/christiannaths/redacted-font https://github.com/christiannaths/redacted-font
- bryans 4y ago
  I get that you were trying to be amusing with the Chrome comment, but in case you weren't actually aware, you only need to push the plus icon to insert a new style. It's the exact same number of clicks to accomplish that task in both browsers.
  - jodrellblank 4y ago
    I was aware because I clicked plus[1] and pressed ctrl-v to put my firefox line in. And it broke because Chrome is "being helpful" by forcing structure in the UI, so it instantly turned into a lot of crossed out lines with yellow warning triangles, and there's there's no visible delete option, no context menu delete, it doesn't respond to the delete key, and Chrome's F12 is just so much more user-hostile than FireFox every time I touch it, like they're kinda forced to have one so people can develop websites I guess, but they'd intensely rather nobody had a good time because that's a potential loophole people could use to remove adverts. Compare that to FireFox which just has a text box and you can type into it, or delete out of it. [1] with that delightful UX where it's /invisible/ until you wave the magic cursor around in the right place.
    - bryans 4y ago
      > with that delightful UX where it's /invisible/ until you wave the magic cursor around in the right place. There is a button at the top of the editor, to the right of the filter input. The buttons that show up on hover are for inserting the new style at a specific position in the cascade, if needed -- but that's a rarer occurrence, which is why it's not visible by default. > And it broke because Chrome is "being helpful" by forcing structure in the UI, so it instantly turned into a lot of crossed out lines with yellow warning triangles, and there's there's no visible delete option, no context menu delete, it doesn't respond to the delete key I agree that one should be able to paste any CSS block or declaration and expect the style editor to parse it. But it's also worth keeping in mind that the only difference in this particular situation is pasting the declaration instead of the surrounding block, and you'd get the results you're after. Chromium's dev tools are definitely not perfect, but I think Firefox's method is much more cumbersome from a developer's perspective.
- javajosh 4y ago
  You could also use a "redacted" font like https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Redacted+Script https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Redacted+Script.

mkoryak 4y ago

If someone is going to reconstruct words in your screenshots, then you got problems that aren't going to be solved by any plugins

zeronine 4y ago
please elaborate
- leokennis 4y ago
  Anyone who has the time and means to reconstruct/deduce the words on your obfuscated screenshot based on the length of the blocks that this extension produces, will very likely have way more efficient means to spy on you anyway.
  - pvg 4y ago
    This isn't really true, random OSINT enthusiasts regularly do this sort of reconstruction on twitter.

tete 4y ago

I assume that it's probably not meant to rely upon with your life or something. After all what if there missed text in pictures or other subtle things that could be deduced from screenshot that you either don't notice or even know about. Maybe that's something that should be mentioned in the description though, just in case.

kevincox 4y ago

Yup. It would be better to just replace the text with randomly sized bars of the same number of lines. You can have fun playing with the algorithm to come up with something that looks vaguely english-like. And the blur for images isn't great. It may be better to just use a black box there. Or maybe pick a single colour from the image or something like that.

matt_heimer 4y ago
Agree with the randomizing of word length. How about also having a choice in obfuscation mode? * Government Mode - Solid black bars so it looks like everything has been redacted. * UX Placeholder Mode - Lighter bars that are a blend of the font color and background color * Lipsum Mode - Replace text with a libsum generator that will truncate to similar size text.
- blincoln 4y ago
  I came to this thread to suggest what you've labelled "Lipsum Mode", because it would preserve the typography style of the page, among other things. I like your other two as well.
  - Vinnl 4y ago
    Good idea, logged here: https://gitlab.com/vincenttunru/obfuscate/-/issues/5 https://gitlab.com/vincenttunru/obfuscate/-/issues/5