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"Security Error" when posting pictures

Started by electric al, March 27, 2015, 08:49:58 AM

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Greg G.

Quote from: andre_janew on May 13, 2015, 12:33:33 PM
My experience has been that re-sizing pictures to a smaller size seems to insure that they will be posted.  The new system seems to like small pictures.  That is what I have found out.

I just found that out too.  Even though I always sized my pics down, if I forgot, it would still take them, but it just took longer.  I take all my pics at full size and resolution settings, then size them down to 1/3 of the original size and that usually worked, except for now.  I brought them up in my graphics processor and checked the size, 1000 X 1333, so I sized it down again to the standard internet posting size of about 600 X 800, that worked.
The idea that a four-year degree is the only path to worthwhile knowledge is insane.
- Mike Row
e

unbeldi

Quote from: Brinybay on August 18, 2015, 12:11:15 PM
Quote from: andre_janew on May 13, 2015, 12:33:33 PM
My experience has been that re-sizing pictures to a smaller size seems to insure that they will be posted.  The new system seems to like small pictures.  That is what I have found out.

I just found that out too.  Even though I always sized my pics down, if I forgot, it would still take them, but it just took longer.  I take all my pics at full size and resolution settings, then size them down to 1/3 of the original size and that usually worked, except for now.  I brought them up in my graphics processor and checked the size, 1000 X 1333, so I sized it down again to the standard internet posting size of about 600 X 800, that worked.

Resizing is no guarantee as you found out.  It is only by chance.  The 'security' feature of the forum checks for certain character strings in the entire image, not only the meta information, and there is no way to prevent these character strings from appearing by random chance in the bit sequence of image pixels.  Sometimes it is just sufficient to resize an image by one pixel to destroy these random sequences, sometimes it takes more.  Size is really not the cause, I have uploaded very large pictures without problems, several megabytes in size with resolutions of 2 or 3 thousand pixels on each side.


compubit

I ended up converting to PNG format to upload, after spending about an hour of "upload", error, resize, error, crop, error, resize, error, save as PNG, upload successful...

Jim
A phone phanatic since I was less than 2 (thanks to Fisher Price); collector since a teenager; now able to afford to play!
Favorite Phone: Western Electric Trimline - it just feels right holding it up to my face!

unbeldi

Quote from: compubit on August 18, 2015, 09:55:11 PM
I ended up converting to PNG format to upload, after spending about an hour of "upload", error, resize, error, crop, error, resize, error, save as PNG, upload successful...

Jim

Ah, that indicates that the offending strings were in the metadata, and since you used the same program always probably that didn't change.  But when changing image format, the meta data probably got rewriten differently.

stub

#19
Test Post
                 One made it and one didn't pass security check and both have been posted in the past with no problem?  Pics were taken in 2012 with same camera that I post everything .    stub
Kenneth Stubblefield

TelePlay

I've had that experience. And another one I had was a photo that would not upload did two days later without having done anything to it. Failed one day, uploaded two days later. There's no pattern to this problem, this happening.

Babybearjs

I was trying to post some photos of a oak switchbox and the board kept coming back that the photos had failed security checks.... has anyone else had this problem??
John

andre_janew

I've been resizing and posting smaller pictures.  That seems to work for me.

dsk

That is my experience too.  I use to set the max with and maximum height to be 1000 pixels. That are good enough for the most of my jpg pictures.

dsk

Ktownphoneco

I'm far from being an expert on this sort of issue, however I read some information on a web site which dealt with security error issues when uploading pictures to web sites.     There were a number of issues discussed, and one suggestion that was put forward, was changing the way that the "jpeg" picture color was created,  from "RGB", to "CMYK".     Several comments on the site, indicated that as soon as they made that change, the upload security issues stopped occurring.    Perhaps that change may help the situation here on CRPF.     I've yet to experience a problem myself when uploading a "jpeg" using "RGB", so I can't test the theory myself.
Here's a shortened  link explaining the difference between  "RGB" and "CMYK" :  http://bit.ly/1Ohu0lp

Jeff Lamb

andre_janew

Is that what is causing the security issues?  Is it really color?  Could it be that the new system doesn't like certain colors?  If that is the case, then some members might consider the new system to be racist.  They might even petition to get rid of such a system.

unbeldi

Quote from: andre_janew on November 26, 2015, 11:37:43 AM
Is that what is causing the security issues?  Is it really color?  Could it be that the new system doesn't like certain colors?  If that is the case, then some members might consider the new system to be racist.  They might even petition to get rid of such a system.

I explained exactly what is causing the "security" failures in the topic that Terri linked to and provided a software tool to test for it, as well as a permanent solution to get rid of it.  Recoding an image in a different color system would not always, perhaps sometimes, remove offending tags in meta data, but certainly it would destroy random bit sequences that happen to be identical, but so does simple resizing (with resampling) in most cases, but not just cropping.

Jack Ryan

Quote from: unbeldi on November 26, 2015, 12:03:14 PM
I explained exactly what is causing the "security" failures in the topic that Terri linked to and provided a software tool to test for it, as well as a permanent solution to get rid of it.

What is the offending tag/data? I had a quick look at your posts and didn't see it. Next time I have the problem I'll edit the metadata to remove the offending data.

Jack

unbeldi

#28
Quote from: Jack Ryan on November 26, 2015, 05:28:39 PM
Quote from: unbeldi on November 26, 2015, 12:03:14 PM
I explained exactly what is causing the "security" failures in the topic that Terri linked to and provided a software tool to test for it, as well as a permanent solution to get rid of it.

What is the offending tag/data? I had a quick look at your posts and didn't see it. Next time I have the problem I'll edit the metadata to remove the offending data.

Jack

Offending data is anything that matches this regular expression:

'~(iframe|\\<\\?|\\<%|html|eval|body|script\W|[CF]WS[\x01-\x0C])~i'

This could be in metadata or by random occurrence any bit sequence in the image data.

Jack Ryan

OK, thanks for that.

I can edit the metadata but fixing random occurrences would be as random as the occurrence itself.

[irrelevant interjection]

A company I do a lot of work for has changed firewall/virus checking so that now all sorts of attachments are stripped off and file transfers interrupted based on type and random occurrences of byte sequences within the data. A similar high level of thinking seems to have been involved.

I took immediate steps to ensure that any data with a tag of "invoice" was unmolested.

[/irrelevant interjection]

Jack