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2026-03-15 04:08:51 UTC

R on Nostr: So, I recently saw some quiet discussion about a paper where researchers ...

So, I recently saw some quiet discussion about a paper where researchers reverse-engineered and disclosed some attacks against PhotoDNA, the very-super-duper-secret algorithm used by tech megacorps to scan for illegal images.

They didn't make any code public, and so... I did: https://github.com/ArcaneNibble/open-alleged-photodna

A _complete_ reverse-engineering and commented Python reimplementation of the algorithm from publicly-leaked binaries.

This means that studying the algorithm and any potential flaws is now much more accessible.

This took only about two days (once I knew that there even _was_ a leaked binary to compare against), which just goes to again show that security through obscurity never works.

🔁 encouraged