One reason Blizzard would do this is to combat RMT + selling your account to a third party. All they would need to do is set up a crawler on eBay or any other website where somebody has posted a screenshot of their account for sale, then dole out a warning / suspension / ban.
One reason nefarious people would use this is to gain verified account name information. Get enough of those and there are bound to be some passwords that are easily brute forced.
Furthermore as the article states blizzard could use this to track private servers.
We'll add this one to copier watermarks, printer watermarks, and fax machine watermarks.
So your account id and realm is available as a watermark in the screen shots, what nefarious problem does that cause? (I can imagine it helps identify griefers and people who cheat and brag)
I'd be concerned for lots of random people that take screenshots and post them online, making public their account ids. Probably not a huge deal, but it's more information that they're giving out that they don't need to be.
The people under NDAs, hackers, and griefers are going to know about this now and just turn them off. Which means the only people negatively impacted by it are the innocents.
Combine money and time and intense interest and huge number of users gives you the situation where people will find exploits.
People in real life have (very rarely) been murdered over video game items. It's probably a good idea to make sure any hidden information is carefully encrypted.
This is an old post so I don't know if anyone will see it, but I'm betting that this is used at least in part to crack down on private servers, thus the inclusion of Server IP.
If you've ever dealt with giving support to people, they usually love to give as little information as possible. I suspect this could potentially help solve any issues or disputes.
The only problem here is that Blizzard didnt encrypt the information in the screenshots. I can understand why they would embed this info, and 9/10 of those cases are ethically sound, but I wouldnt want some random skiddies get this information.
I don't feel like encrypting it would make it acceptable. Keys can be leaked.
I just don't feel like it's okay to secretly store someone's private information in a file they believe is safe to share publicly, no matter how well you think you've hidden it.
I'm growing increasingly tired of technology being used by the large to monitor the small. I'd like to see an RFS from YC for companies that use data mining, machine learning, etc. to the advantage of the individual.
I believe the best defense would simply be education & knowledge of all the encryption/privacy tools available to the average user, if they feel their ISP/whatever is snooping or intruding too far.
'in order to avoid any further watermarking, type: /console SET screenshotQuality "10" which will set the quality of your screenshots to the maximum and create screenshots that do not include the watermark.'
If this was nefarious, I doubt they would give you such an easy way to disable it. Though I am curious what the default value of screenshotQuality is.
In any case, steganography remains awesome, as ever:
I don't think its disabled, the finders just aren't able to retrieve it via the sharpening technique. There is some disassembly of the WOW binary several pages into the thread which I have no way to verify but if accurate is a strong indication that this is real.
So it looks like Glyph Lefkowitz's "extremist" opinion on software ethics http://glyf.livejournal.com/46589.html was completely right. When a program does something the user doesn't want, the programmer is in the wrong. Programmer is to user as lawyer is to client. We need a recognized and binding way for programmers to submit to this code of ethics.
Your premise is flawed. Programmer is to user as refrigerator manufacturer is to user. If the fridge fails and your food goes bad, caveat emptor. If you have a problem with that, nobody is stopping you from writing your own code.
It starts like this. How far from the day companies do this with the images you take with your mobile, with the videos you stream, etc.? The world will turn into a DRM fest.
I was wondering recently if there's an equivalent of inkjet-dots in popular digital cameras, either deliberately added, or accidentally in noise patterns, which would allow you to link two separate images to the same camera.
That could be interesting for finding people posting some photos under their real name, and then identifying their other interests they'd prefer to keep separate (legal interests or not).
something like this can be used to track down someone who does bootleg recordings. Say our bootlegger buys a camera from samsung, samsung uses a water mark like this which gives out a unique device id. The bootlegger who doesn't know about this tracking thing uploads his 1080p raw video. MPAA then collaborates with samsung to find out was the bootlegger(although that would involve tracking the sale from the reseller/distributer and contacting/capturing the bootlegger).I just gave MPAA a really nice idea.
Very interesting technology. Would be cool to see this put to good use. It's a lot easier to get someone to post a screenshot than it is to get them to email a dump.
A minor point: the character name is not included, the account ID is. I don't think the account ID is that helpful for any prospective hacker, but this method might allow you to compare two screenshots and confirm that they were taken by the same person.
1. NDAs - if someone's in a closed beta, and starts posting screenshots, they can quickly identify the culprit.
2. Hacks - if someone anonymously boasts about finding some exploit in the game, and shows screenshots, they can be tracked down.
3. Abuse prevention - if someone posts screenshots of themselves abusing another player, or breaking the TOS in some other way - but with names blurred out - it would still be possible to find out who it was.
It's not uncommon for griefers or cheaters to anonymously brag about their exploits via screenshot. If the screenshot were watermarked, identifying their account and whatnot, then Blizzard could take action against them.
The suggested idea (regardless of whether or not it's plausible) is NDA leak tracking: finding the people in private betas that are leaking information when they shouldn't be.
If it turns out to be true, it's a pretty cool yet creepy application of steganography in the wild.
"This item looks like it turned inside out, here's a screenshot!" (made up issue) -> now the support has all information they actually care about and which user may not even remember anymore - game version, time, servers, character ids, etc.
Curious question here: If you take the screenshot you get from WOW and open it up with photoshop/gimp/paint and save it now as PNG or different format, would it be possible to degrade the quality of the dots rendering it useless to be tracked?
PNG is a lossless format and will not cause the image data to change whatsoever upon saving. JPEG, on the other hand, is a lossy format, but until more is known, it's impossible to say whether or not this secret data (if that's what it really is) happens to be muddled by the lossyness of JPEG's algorithm.
Probably not. It looks like this might be doing something clever and possibly relatively robust in the frequency domain, though the details haven't been reverse engineered yet.
Secretly seems a little strong... is there any sort of effort to cover this up, or did they just not mention it in the patch?
I don't fault them for not mentioning it in release notes - if I make a change to my apps that the user won't notice, I don't mention it in the release notes.
To the extent that they introduced a security bug, they should admit it and fix it. But that's a technical lapse, not a moral lapse.
I can see this being partially helpful when verifying that in-game screenshots have not been tampered with (for example. for support, when you claim you had an item and it disappeared etc), but I don't know if there are that many copies of it duped across the image.
[+] [-] citricsquid|13 years ago|reply
Edit: Page 6 includes confirmation from a (supposed) Blizzard representative that this is for NDA leak tracking: http://www.ownedcore.com/forums/world-of-warcraft/world-of-w...
[+] [-] sabalaba|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] revenz|13 years ago|reply
Furthermore as the article states blizzard could use this to track private servers.
[+] [-] bonch|13 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] ChuckMcM|13 years ago|reply
So your account id and realm is available as a watermark in the screen shots, what nefarious problem does that cause? (I can imagine it helps identify griefers and people who cheat and brag)
[+] [-] RHSeeger|13 years ago|reply
The people under NDAs, hackers, and griefers are going to know about this now and just turn them off. Which means the only people negatively impacted by it are the innocents.
[+] [-] DanBC|13 years ago|reply
Combine money and time and intense interest and huge number of users gives you the situation where people will find exploits.
People in real life have (very rarely) been murdered over video game items. It's probably a good idea to make sure any hidden information is carefully encrypted.
[+] [-] pseudonym|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zachinglis|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zwdr|13 years ago|reply
So why wouldnt they encrypt it? Not enough space?
[+] [-] trotsky|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] furyofantares|13 years ago|reply
I just don't feel like it's okay to secretly store someone's private information in a file they believe is safe to share publicly, no matter how well you think you've hidden it.
[+] [-] TazeTSchnitzel|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nitrogen|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jmsduran|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stcredzero|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kibwen|13 years ago|reply
If this was nefarious, I doubt they would give you such an easy way to disable it. Though I am curious what the default value of screenshotQuality is.
In any case, steganography remains awesome, as ever:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography
[+] [-] mbell|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chaud|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shin_lao|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cousin_it|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] phazmatis|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eswangren|13 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] ericcholis|13 years ago|reply
1) Automatically attaching image galleries to the Armory* profile of characters based on account id
2) Easy to give credit to players providing screenshots for Blizzard run contests
3) Opens the Armory API a bit more
Obviously, these can all be exploited due to the "openness" of the screenshot format.
*For the WoW illiterate: The Armory is a public database of player's characters, items, achievements, etc...
[+] [-] phazmatis|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hcarvalhoalves|13 years ago|reply
It starts like this. How far from the day companies do this with the images you take with your mobile, with the videos you stream, etc.? The world will turn into a DRM fest.
[+] [-] jodrellblank|13 years ago|reply
That could be interesting for finding people posting some photos under their real name, and then identifying their other interests they'd prefer to keep separate (legal interests or not).
[+] [-] fmax30|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] debacle|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mattdeboard|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rtkwe|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] teamonkey|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yen223|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pavel_lishin|13 years ago|reply
1. NDAs - if someone's in a closed beta, and starts posting screenshots, they can quickly identify the culprit.
2. Hacks - if someone anonymously boasts about finding some exploit in the game, and shows screenshots, they can be tracked down.
3. Abuse prevention - if someone posts screenshots of themselves abusing another player, or breaking the TOS in some other way - but with names blurred out - it would still be possible to find out who it was.
[+] [-] gilrain|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lvh|13 years ago|reply
If it turns out to be true, it's a pretty cool yet creepy application of steganography in the wild.
[+] [-] cnlwsu|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] viraptor|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] markszcz|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shawnz|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] makomk|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andrewljohnson|13 years ago|reply
I don't fault them for not mentioning it in release notes - if I make a change to my apps that the user won't notice, I don't mention it in the release notes.
To the extent that they introduced a security bug, they should admit it and fix it. But that's a technical lapse, not a moral lapse.
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] makmanalp|13 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] talloaktrees|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mike-cardwell|13 years ago|reply