A YouTube Content ID/Copyright fingerprinting evasion technique I haven't seen before
https://plus.google.com/+LaurenWeinstein/posts/WC9FC8HVg8Q As you may know, I have a hobby of detecting and exposing YouTube crooks uploading and monetizing videos to which they have no rights. Typically they use rather crude methods that obviously degrade the visible video -- reduced size video insets, aspect ratio changes, disruptive contrast/brightness variations, and so on. But this one is special. The video quality didn't look great but it was watchable. Something seemed wrong with it though. I couldn't put my finger on it at first, but the clue was when I looked at the seek position thumbnails -- they didn't seem to match the video at all, they all appeared to be some sort of rainbow effect. HUH? Then I realized what was happening. It appears that every other frame is a static "rainbow" image with an empty white video inset square. But instead of actually placing the payload video within the inset as is the common evasion technique, the crook is using the full-size video frame and using the alternate frames to try fool the YT fingerprinting system -- successfully for the 2.5 months since it was uploaded. Sometimes you can see a flash of these when you start playing the video as well -- and you can see them other times too if you grab the seek pointer just right. Definitely a new one for my collection! The video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCoG5h7dr3g = = = = Internet Political Trolls Collection Project (USA 2016): http://vortex.com/trolls = = = = --Lauren-- Lauren Weinstein ([email protected]): http://www.vortex.com/lauren Founder: - Network Neutrality Squad: http://www.nnsquad.org - PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com/privacy-info Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: http://www.pfir.org/pfir-info Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com Google+: http://google.com/+LaurenWeinstein Twitter: http://twitter.com/laurenweinstein Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 / Skype: vortex.com I have consulted to Google, but I am not currently doing so -- my opinions expressed here are mine alone. _______________________________________________ pfir mailing list http://lists.pfir.org/mailman/listinfo/pfir
