Quacktivism: Hacking Flash Animations
chiefthracian
a parable for the 21st century
(and a lesson in queer hacktivism a.k.a. "Quacktivism")
(c) 2004 by Ezekiel J. Krahlin
(Jehovah's Queer Witness
Premise: Why would a Quacktivist ever require a copy of
any animation on the Internet? Because it may contain
hidden code, or convey nuances in the enemy's propaganda
tactics...which will then be sent to our Specialists in Social
Engineering. Remember (Mighty Mouse Virus says):
"Not all important messages are conveyed through text."
Enjoy this message to my friend, author of "John's Animations"
at:
http://animatedparadise.0catch.com/
He feels that the coding of Macromedia's Flash Animation is a
secure way to protect your animations from online copying, and
illegal redistribution therefrom. I told him if you were a
hacker, you'd figure it out...and sho' nuff I did. May this
lesson be understood by those with the wisdom to understand.
Live long and hack!
--begin my msg. to John:
From: Ezekiel Krahlin
To: phill...@hooya.com
Received: 05/08/04 10:30 PM
Subject: horse.html
Attachments: horse1.gif (8KB) horse2.gif (10KB) horse3.gif (9KB)
horse-anim.gif (25KB)
http://animatedparadise.0catch.com/mechanixflash/horse.html
Stunning "dream time" sequence in part of the horse's day.
Truly a magnificent little masterpiece of light and shadow.
The horse, drawn with much affection and bold lines/colors
dances on your screen for sheer joy. Best thing to do, in the
entire world...can you name even ONE thing more fun?
I could meditate on that one animation for HOURS! Wonderful,
positive energy from the Spirit of Pegasus.
So this hacker's gonna figure out how to crack your
presumptuous Macromedia copy-protection...and DOWNLOAD your
anims. to my hard drive....
Well, whaddya know, even Opera browser's "Save as w/images"
was tricked into NOT including the horse's flash animation.
However, I KNOW a good hacker can EASILY swipe your animation
in at least TWO different ways:
1) Have a video program record whatever shows up next on the
screen, for 60 seconds. Then you'd run your animation...it
gets perfectly recorded...just need to crop it out of the rest
of the screen, and do that for each frame. Of course, you'd
also remove the useless start and end frames...this almost
goes w/o saying.
2) Use a high-quality (not cheap) web cam to record the
animation...just point it around, to look AT the computer, not
FROM it, as is usually the case. The animation can then be
saved, and distributed throughout cyberspace.
But, a low-income hacker w/o connections, can achieve the same
as (1) above...a brute method of swiping your animation would
be thus: Just run a screen-capture utility, and each snapshot,
you try to capture a new frame of the animation. This might
take a bunch of hits-and-misses, but I'll bet a little
patience and careful file naming, will give us a restored copy
of your original. Now I could do that right now, but let it
suffice I send you THREE different frames from that animation,
just to PROVE my point:
horse1.gif (8 kb)
http://www.gay-bible.org/write/2_hack-anim1.htm
horse2.gif (10 kb)
http://www.gay-bible.org/write/2_hack-anim2.htm
horse3.gif (9 kb)
http://www.gay-bible.org/write/2_hack-anim3.htm
And let me attach LASTLY, the animation I created from them,
to show you that hackers ALWAYS find a way around ANYTHING.
May I present:
horse4.gif (26 kb)
http://www.gay-bible.org/write/2_hack-anim3.htm
And I did ALL THAT off your animated horse, while on the
Internet, and between typing these lines to you. IOW: LESS
THAN 10 MINUTES!!!
--finis
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Permission granted by author for anyone to distribute this
writing free of charge (including translation into any
language)...under condition that no profit is made therefrom,
and that it remain intact and complete, including title and
credit to the original author.
Ezekiel J. Krahlin
http://surf.to/gaybible
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--
"Many are called, but few are chosen.
Step right up for your lederhosen!"
- Big Gay Brother (Zeke Krahlin)
http://www.gay-bible.org