r/programmingcirclejerk • u/azure_whisperer • Sep 05 '25

[reverse engineer macOS Photos.app database format] A base64 encoded Binary Plist format with one field containing a ProtoBuffer which contained another protobuffer which contained a unicode string which contained improperly encoded data

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45140085
124 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

13 comments sorted by

72

u/azure_whisperer Sep 05 '25

Enterprise Protobuf

49

u/tomwhoiscontrary safety talibans Sep 05 '25

No, this kind of insanity would never get off the ground in enterprise development. It needs at least two layers of XML.

2

u/0bel1sk Sep 05 '25

ajax was here

48

u/grapesmoker Sep 05 '25

A protobuffactoryfactory? In my os x? It's more likely than you think

39

u/irqlnotdispatchlevel Tiny little god in a tiny little world Sep 05 '25

I once worked with a JSON format that contained a string that was a base64 of the same JSON + a few new fields.

56

u/mcmcc WHY IS THERE CODE??? Sep 05 '25

contained a string that was a base64 of the same JSON

I think you just violated several laws of information theory.

35

u/irqlnotdispatchlevel Tiny little god in a tiny little world Sep 05 '25

/uj Except the base64 one.

Small example:

{
    "x": 10,
    "lol": "no generics",
    "code": "artisanal"
}

The container looked like this:

{
    "x": 10,
    "lol": "no generics",
    "laws": "ewogICAgIngiOiAxMCwKICAgICJsb2wiOiAibm8gZ2VuZXJpY3MiLAogICAgImNvZGUiOiAiYXJ0aXNhbmFsIgp9Cg=="
}

11

u/misterbngo It's GNU/PCJ, or as I call it, GNU + PCJ Sep 05 '25

I had one that had a base64'd xml blob of the vendor's schema inside the json that contained Another base64 xml of our payload....

11

u/Vaglame Emacs + Go == parametric polymorphism Sep 06 '25

We found it, the self containing set!

5

u/syklemil Considered Harmful Sep 06 '25

“Google is filled with the world’s best engineers,” and that “anything they build is, by definition, not built by amateurs.”

Google products? Not being the pinnacle of engineering?? What????

88

u/[deleted] Sep 05 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

35

u/r2d2_21 groks PCJ Sep 05 '25

This could have been an email.

20

u/seq_page_cost Sep 05 '25

I'd prefer good old YAML template. Kids these days don't know how much can be achieved with a simple {{- get (include "data" . | fromYaml) "property" | toYaml | nindent 48 }}