Something Awful and Friends - The roller-coaster train-wreck embarrassing downfall of a Web 1.0 giant and its tick offspring like from Cloverfield

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RCWCO2e said:
Doesn't matter because they already have code implemented years ago that attaches a unique id, and when you take screenshots it includes a unique watermark that is associated with the registered account, it was put in to curb the mod/admin forum leaking way back.

Doesn't matter if you use an extension on your browser etc the screenshot will still have the watermark if you are logged in when taking the screenshot.

it's kind of like the transparent watermarks they have for printers/camera's etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_Identification_Code
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this is easily disproved just by using inspect element to take off a few of the gradient overlays and then using a paint bucket tool with no anti-aliasing and no color similarity matching
 
RCWCO2e said:
Doesn't matter because they already have code implemented years ago that attaches a unique id, and when you take screenshots it includes a unique watermark that is associated with the registered account, it was put in to curb the mod/admin forum leaking way back.

Doesn't matter if you use an extension on your browser etc the screenshot will still have the watermark if you are logged in when taking the screenshot.

it's kind of like the transparent watermarks they have for printers/camera's etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_Identification_Code
Click to expand...
This kind of thing doesn't really work for still images, at least not in a way that isn't identifiable and resolvable. Video games closed betas try the same thing, but the only ones that work have changing data masked that can be plucked from video. I'd be very surprised if any type of mask or marker survived jpg compression without being visible and having a known solution.
 
RCWCO2e said:
Doesn't matter because they already have code implemented years ago that attaches a unique id, and when you take screenshots it includes a unique watermark that is associated with the registered account, it was put in to curb the mod/admin forum leaking way back.

Doesn't matter if you use an extension on your browser etc the screenshot will still have the watermark if you are logged in when taking the screenshot.

it's kind of like the transparent watermarks they have for printers/camera's etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_Identification_Code
Click to expand...
Pretty sure that's bunk. What they did do however was watermark the html so you couldn't save it. (And iirc it isn't just the loggedinuser field)
 
software said:
This kind of thing doesn't really work for still images, at least not in a way that isn't identifiable and resolvable. Video games closed betas try the same thing, but the only ones that work have changing data masked that can be plucked from video. I'd be very surprised if any type of mask or marker survived jpg compression without being visible and having a known solution.
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much of the screenshots provided here are png, so it would work, but then once you figured out where it was, you could find screenshots of where goons have their own screenshots of posts up on the forum, and then transplant the markers from those onto yours
 
I would suggest the guy suggesting this is just trying to do a gayop of some type.

They claimed to be privy to secret admin leaks on equally secret private discords, and then come out of nowhere with this nonsense? I am not buying any of it.
 
Hahahaha as if Lowtax or anyone at SA has the coding ability to embed some watermark CSI shit on the site. If that's true I'll eat my hat.
 
The only reasonable/non-shitty way to do that would be dynamically modifying user avatar images via steganography and then embedding a token. Possible, but not something that's going to get implemented by volunteer IT jockeys on a dying mental illness support forum running software from 2002.
 
Here's the thing though. I've shoved out SHITLOADS of screenshots ...and not one of them is sent to the admins by all the raging incels stalking this thread?
 
Well, I do remind you all that Lowtax, according to the late Dynastia, did try to link a pixel-wide image here to harvest all our IPs.

Key word try, and he failed.

So yeah. This is just bunk. Moving on!
 
Silicon Wasteland said:
The only reasonable/non-shitty way to do that would be dynamically modifying user avatar images via steganography and then embedding a token. Possible, but not something that's going to get implemented by volunteer IT jockeys on a dying mental illness support forum running software from 2002.
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it would become immediately apparent because the avatar urls would start including a hash since people are being served different versions, it's not really something that will fool a community of people that constantly archives shit
 
I believe the image watermarking was implemented as part of the very, very cool and very real Project TITAN.
 
X Prime said:
Well, I do remind you all that Lowtax, according to the late Dynastia, did try to link a pixel-wide image here to harvest all our IPs.

Key word try, and he failed.

So yeah. This is just bunk. Moving on!
Click to expand...

i just saw that while skimming through the old thread and wasn't it a screenshot of a reply that lowtax posted, not a 1px image? and he hilariously failed at it?

i used to work for one of the industry leaders for this sort of thing. implementing stego to catch individual leakers was pretty much impossible other than hardcoding it into game beta binaries. the main use was copyright ID & enforcement. i quit when some underground bestiality movie website wanted to hire us to track down which users were leaking paid videos and our boss considered their contract.

anyway unless lowtax is selling custom videos of russian hookers getting screwed by farm animals for $200 a download, he probably cant afford that shit let alone shit that works.
 
there's a decent amount of goons who do infosec for a living so i wouldn't be surprised if they were able to latch a screenshot steno system onto the existing husk of gooncode. its simple 2000's tech. that would be a really goon thing to do instead of fixing search and archives. if you're really worried about your super secret forums identity and trust in the technical abilities of goons, or plan on leaking the mod forums just save your screenshots as jpegs and compress them a bit. it will break the shittier attempts at watermarking a screenshot.

i think its a bit weird the timing its being brought up too, but its no big roadblock to get around for people who actually care that goons find out about their shitposting alter ego.

goons definitely have used the yellow post thing to ban people many times in the past though, definitely good to be aware of that one.
 
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