Also... who the hell tries to make changes to a user's sudoers file from their install script? This is an awful project.
So I investigated, lining up the real Spotify logo in GIMP - it doesn't match up, the details are different!
But then I checked the image metadata:
`Actions Software Agent Name : GPT-4o, OpenAI API`
Doh, I should've saved time and checked that first. TIL OpenAI explicitly watermarks their output images via metadata. It even has c2pa signatures (which I didn't bother trying to verify)
The ebaf executable checks the current directory by default, to look for the ebpf code to load[1].
So, running the install script this allows any ebpf code to be loaded into the kernel without a sudo password. You probably don't want this! (I'm pretty sure that'd be enough for a root LPE)
Further, the ebaf executable writes logs to a file named `/tmp/ebaf-stats.dat` [2]. An unprivileged user could put a symlink here, causing the destination file to get clobbered.
It also re-resolves all domain names every 600 seconds. Given that there are over a thousand domains listed, that's quite a lot of DNS traffic! [3]
Also, the "web dashboard" claims to listen on localhost, but it actually listens on INADDR_ANY [4]
[0] https://github.com/Kazedaa/eBAF/blob/8f88cefe0b5a837aa99f454...
[1] https://github.com/Kazedaa/eBAF/blob/8f88cefe0b5a837aa99f454...
[2] https://github.com/Kazedaa/eBAF/blob/8f88cefe0b5a837aa99f454...
[3] https://github.com/Kazedaa/eBAF/blob/8f88cefe0b5a837aa99f454...
[4] https://github.com/Kazedaa/eBAF/blob/8f88cefe0b5a837aa99f454...
What I find most interesting is that it apparently didn’t trigger their content filters which, at least previously, were also blocking piracy stuff.
I see that it all comes down to a blacklist of urls. Wouldn’t eBPF just make things more complicated?
If you buy a fancy network card from a company like Nvidia, you could run the eBPF program on the card itself and the kernel wouldn't even see the packet come in. This use case doesn't seem like it'd need that kind of performance tweak, though.
It's useful as a fun project to experiment with eBPF, though!
And because it uses eBPF, technically (it probably doesn't support this yet but it could) you could block requests at the application level, even if it uses TLS, before it ever even gets to a resolver or firewall.
Taking that fact even further, this means that not only well-behaved resolv.conf-reading applications are blocked, but programs that use their own DoH/DoT could be as well. Your browser wouldn't even need an ad-blocker extension. Your local resolver and your VPN-specific resolver both continue to work normally while also blocking what you want.
No means no, my computer my choice. sudo build a real product.
Then "opt out" by not using the product? No one has a right to use Spotify. If you don't like the terms, don't use the service.
I'll never get why people smart enough to build something technically impressive like this feel the need to throw these completely childish pseudo-rationalizations out there. Yeah, you are stealing actually.. Is it that big of a deal? Nope. But it still is what it is.
Do they think this kind of false-moralizing will protect them from DMCA takedowns or something?
If their server sends you bits, why should you delete the bits? If you accidentally sent them the wrong bits, do you think they'd be nice enough to delete them? Pre-emptively before receiving any notification from you?
Terms are irrelevant and in most cases have no legal power at all. Fighting back with technical power (as YouTube has done) is fair game though.
The golden rule of capitalism is to do everything in your physical ability to improve your individual situation at the expense of others. Feel free to come to an agreement with Spotify, that neither of you will do capitalism against the other. Until then, you should probably play the game or you will lose by default. Spotify isn't that important but you should definitely get into the mindset of playing the hand you're dealt.
Mental models differ, it is what it is. Stealing from artists is of course always poor form, don't do that.
Or is just an arbitrary bar of convenience that you set case-by-case depending on how you want to feel about it?
> No one has a right to revenue or profit.
I certainly didn't imply anything this universal. But as a society we do have laws, and if you engage with Spotify's product, you agree to their terms, and in that very specific context they do have a legal right to see their terms held up.
Now.. will they go after you for bypassing their ads? Probably not. Will your actions have a negative impact on them? Again, nope.. I definitely agree with you that they'll be fine..
But then the people who make these products that facilitate this kind of activity should just have the conviction to stand by their actions and say "yep we're helping you steal from Spotify".
Just own it, especially if your justification is "it doesn't matter anyways".
But that literally applies to any online licensing check flow.
And extends to binaries that are on your disk. I can patch that conditional jump, it is on my hard drive.
While Spotify is obviously an immoral company, you, the person reading this, are not entitled to free 24/7 cloud-streamed music on demand. They are a business and they don’t owe that service to you on principle.
If you don’t like them as a company, there’s way to purchase the music directly (remember how we all used the iTunes Store back in the day) and there are other streaming services whose morals you might find more acceptable.
To be clear, I’m not making some grand “piracy is evil” argument, but I’m saying that to publish software enabling piracy with the justification that a business’ free service is not good enough value for you is a bit out there.
I thought TiVo settled that argument long ago.
Edit; maybe not TiVo leading the disruption here: https://modern-counsel.com/2016/tivo/
I took it anyway. I have a few terabytes of flac that I stream through Plex when I feel like it. I dare anyone to stop me. Pay hard drive manufacturers, not IP companies.
This applies to a lot of things, not Spotify in particular.
This jumble of sentences stuck out to me as logically incoherent, but not necessarily LLM-generated. I guess I need to update my mental model a bit to account for more things being being LLM-generated.
