Looking inside your screenshots

[Sendatsu]

so i skipped pages 2 and 3 to say this. Is there seriously an argument that blizz might be tracking us through our print screens when we readily allow them all of our information via our internet connection to their servers? Any and everything that exists on a screen shot, hidden or not, they already have access to on their servers.

What would be the point of finding you through a screen shot when they have people who already go through their server information to gather much more accurate and relevant information?

You are saying this under the impression that Blizzard's employees are omnipresent and omniscient. The ticket waiting time on my realm is currently 6 days, the GMs are already working at full speed while at the same time trying to be polite and keep up with all their work at a basic wage, and Blizzard is losing customers faster than a bag of sand with a hole at the bottom.

When you screenshot something and share it with the world it's usually something you feel like sharing, something different: a new transmo, an achievement, a bug, a cheat, a hack. They are not doing this to track your latest hairdo but to make sure that, even if you erase your character's name and chat, they will still be able to track the origin of the event you are showing off and THEN check their logs to see what happened and how they can fix it.

It's not paranoia, it's business thinking.

[Sendatsu]

This is my last post in this thread, Its beyond stupid and I'm not gonna be a part of it.

Hey Frito, I thought you said you wouldn't be a part of this any more :P

So, you never told me, your screenshot (http://img12.imageshack.us/img12/8409/secretsa.png) was from a high resolution screen right?

But remember guys! Only if you use the super low quality jpg format that has artifacts and is a lossy format, If you use the nice quality loss less formats they don't wanna track you anymore.

No, as I said many times, use the maximum quality minus one, so instead of 10, go for 9. All JPG qualities between 1-9 contain the watermark. I don't know why it is not included in 10, maybe they wanted us to actually have a high quality option, given that a) it would be really obvious if a high quality shot had so much noise scattered in the middle of the screen and b) the default setting is 3 anyhow, not everyone knows how to change it using console commands and if they do, they are also probably smart enough to use FRAPS to capture their screens (which would skip the watermark function anyway).

It's funny how you won't follow the simple instructions I've written in the first post to see your own watermark. Well it was funny, now it's getting annoying

[Sendatsu]

It's already been proven (on page one) that the "watermark" is in fact JPEG artifacts. The fact that you still deny this despite the evidence demonstrates your lack of knowledge and stubborness. This thread is going nowhere.

Which I disproved in post #21 (http://www.ownedcore.com/forums/worl...ml#post2489037).

We are way past that.

_Mike disassembled the client code and found that a watermark is indeed added intentionally on top of the screenshots. (http://www.ownedcore.com/forums/worl...ml#post2489452)

We are now waiting for someone to look inside s_pWatermarkData and s_uWatermarkDataBytes to see what's in there.

[Ssateneth]

Which I disproved in post #21 (http://www.ownedcore.com/forums/worl...ml#post2489037).

We are way past that.

_Mike disassembled the client code and found that a watermark is indeed added intentionally on top of the screenshots. (http://www.ownedcore.com/forums/worl...ml#post2489452)

We are now waiting for someone to look inside s_pWatermarkData and s_uWatermarkDataBytes to see what's in there.

I +repped you to DENYING Etherea SO HARD. It was well-deserved.

[Sendatsu]

Many techniques have been proposed, such as in
[1-6]. However, most of them are fragile in the sense that the
hidden data cannot be recovered when compression or other
small alteration is applied to the marked image

You just read the first two sentences and that's it? Did you even see the abstract?

We then propose a novel robust lossless data hiding technique, which does not generate salt-pepper noise. This technique has been successfully applied to many commonly used images

Any MSc student can apply a way to successfully hide/embed a watermark in an image, they even teach it in unis: http://www.csee.wvu.edu/~xinl/course...ata_hiding.ppt

Another interesting read for you, encrypted text messages in color images: http://www.ijcaonline.org/volume4/nu...pxc3871071.pdf

[Sendatsu]

Ehem.

Bruce Davis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_...me_industry%29) is an American businessman, currently CEO and chairman of Digimarc. Formerly the head of both Imagic and Activision, he is known for his role in the development of the video game industry.

Digimarc (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digimarc) is a digital watermarking technology provider enabling the invisible embedding of information into many forms of content, including printed material, audio, video, imagery, and certain objects. Digimarc technology provides solutions for media identification and management, counterfeit and piracy deterrence, and digital commerce.

Convenient.

[Sendatsu]

Ok, are you ready?

US7653210: The general "seek and id" system patent: http://www.google.co.uk/patents/US7653210

US8045748: The watermarking patent: http://www.google.co.uk/patents/US8045748

US8027508: Another one of the watermarking patents: http://www.google.co.uk/patents/US8027508

US6104812: An old patent that looks like the predecessor of the one WoW is using: http://www.google.co.uk/patents/US6104812

US7502759: Same concept as above: http://www.google.co.uk/patents/US7502759

[l0l1dk]

I wrote a tool that will disable the watermarking by patching WoW. It's posted here (Screenshot Watermark Disabler) in the bots and programs section.

[Sendatsu]

I wrote a tool that will disable the watermarking by patching WoW. It's posted here (Screenshot Watermark Disabler) in the bots and programs section.

Thank you l0l1dk, I'll have a look at the C++ code now but did you ever figure out what's in the watermark?

[l0l1dk]

Thank you l0l1dk, I'll have a look at the C++ code now but did you ever figure out what's in the watermark?

I never really looked at what all's in it. _Mike said that it contains your account name and a timestamp.

[Sendatsu]

I never really looked at what all's in it. _Mike said that it contains your account name and a timestamp.

What are the chances of your PatchBytes[] corrupting the WoW client?

[l0l1dk]

What are the chances of your PatchBytes[] corrupting the WoW client?

The program checks that the bytes at the address are valid (either the patched bytes or the original bytes) before patching, so unless I did something wrong, it shouldn't ever happen.

[Winsane]

This is now getting very interesting, how hard would it be to figure out a way to decrypt the watermarks?

[Sendatsu]

This is now getting very interesting, how hard would it be to figure out a way to decrypt the watermarks?

_Mike has already mentioned a few tips in http://www.ownedcore.com/forums/worl...ml#post2489487 :

Source: osX build 15662
58D9F0 is the address of the same function in the current live windows 32 bit exe.
58DA60 is the function which takes the actual screenshot, and BB6990 is where the watermark data is encoded.

If someone is an expert in Assembly, they can peek into the memory and see what's in s_pWatermarkData.

[Saronite]

Sendatsu i gonna have to come out of my lurkerhole and give it to you, for me this is the single best speculating topic ever made.
Opening of yoggybox comes close but we all knew it wasnt able to open, but the read was fun .
I really like how you have put your teeth into this and neglecting all negativity about it and continue your voyage into solving this.
After reading your topic i have to admid, their realy is something about those ''barrcodes'' and it really got me started to think what use it has for blizzard.
It should be allready clear that its not for detecting bots or whatever becouse they have other resources for that, but what is it?
That one enlarged picture clearly shows a pattern that could be decoded somehow by blizzard.
I dont see a single reason to put something like that right infront of our eyes, invisible but its there for blizzard to use, but what for?
I give you rep for this and i am allready exited on what tomorrow wil bring to this topic.