Block YouTube Ads on AppleTV by Decrypting and Stripping Ads from Profobuf
ericdraken.com
I discovered that putting a man-in-the-middle proxy between my Apple TV and the world lets me decrypt HTTPS traffic. From there, I can read the Protocol Buffer data Google uses to populate YouTube with ads. It is too CPU-intensive to decode Protobuf on the fly, so instead, I found a flaw in the Protobuf format which allows me to reliably change one byte to obliterate ads.
What follows is a reference guide for setting up a bare-metal network router to block malicious ads, obnoxious ads, tracking, clickbait, crypto-jackers, scam popups, Windows spying on you, etc. using blocklists to protect all networked devices.
I discovered that putting a man-in-the-middle proxy between my Apple TV and the world lets me decrypt HTTPS traffic. From there, I can read the Protocol Buffer data Google uses to populate YouTube with ads. It is too CPU-intensive to decode Protobuf on the fly, so instead, I found a flaw in the Protobuf format which allows me to reliably change one byte to obliterate ads.
What follows is a reference guide for setting up a bare-metal network router to block malicious ads, obnoxious ads, tracking, clickbait, crypto-jackers, scam popups, Windows spying on you, etc. using blocklists to protect all networked devices.