
Spellfucker - a3n
https://spellfucker.com/
======
syphilis2
"The goal of the project is to make text hard to read for computers yet fairly
easy to read for humans"

At first look it doesn't pass the search engine test.
[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=I%27ve+bien+aloune+whyth+jou+eensi...](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=I%27ve+bien+aloune+whyth+jou+eenside+mi+mynd&t=ffab&ia=web)

~~~
bussie
"The goal of the project is to make text hard to read for computers yet fairly
easy to read for humans"

What's the advantage to this?

~~~
emodendroket
Defeating censorship, frustrating accounts to analyze or index communications,
etc.

~~~
tarboreus
Spamming people and making it impossible for blind people to use the internet?

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xixixao
Ju kud tejk ej lengvich from ej diferent lengvich femili tu erajv et samfink
similr. For furdr obfaskejshn ju kud juz diferent transliterejshn.

Slavik pipl shud fajnd dis kvajt ridebl.

~~~
Vinkekatten
Æss a nårvidsjæn itt vassent tu hard tu riid jur vraiting laik dis. Aj vånder
håo diffikult itt iss får a slav tu ønderstænd nårvinglisj....

Edit: and now I feel like Petter Solberg. [1]

[1] [https://youtu.be/Kaeh8FRPANs?t=4s](https://youtu.be/Kaeh8FRPANs?t=4s)

~~~
fishnchips
Pole here. Trivial. Then again, I studied in Denmark, so I know how to read
those fancy letters.

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peteretep
This is what it's like for an English person to read Scots:

[https://sco.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page](https://sco.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page)

~~~
noxToken
I've probably spoken with 3 or 4 Scots in my entire my entire life, and I've
heard a few speak in various news/radio spots. Listening to a Scottish person
speak really sounds like someone speaking English with a heavy accent. Seeing
it written is nothing short of amazing.

~~~
_petronius
The Socts language[0] is not to be confused with Scottish English[1] (although
it's easy to see the elements of the Scottish accent in English in Scots
orthography).

Scots is a fellow-descendant from Middle English (alongside modern English),
with some minor grammatical, and more substantial vocabulary divergence.

[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scots_language](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scots_language)

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_English](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_English)

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rosbrith
The output reminds me of the writings of Bascule in Feersum Endjinn [0] but
it's somehow not quite as legible!

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feersum_Endjinn#Writing_style](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feersum_Endjinn#Writing_style)

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SagelyGuru
Aj kud ríd it kvajt ízili. Hel, Aj ívn nou lotz of pípl hír hú spík end rajt
lajk tat ál dze tajm end sink itz inglyš. But mejbí tatz cóz Aj em Slavík :)

Ser10us14 th0u6h, 18 n0t t51s 0b4u8cat10n be44er a6a1ns4 c0mpu4er8?

PS. Kudos for the domain name! Vivid and apt nouns are what English is best
at. Though I may have used spelfakr.com

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greenhatman
They should make a version of this that replaces words with homophones. This
way spellcheckers would also not pick up that the document has been messed
with.

~~~
Taek
Not sure if I've missed the point, but good forensic software can parse
grammatical structure and use that. The English language has enough
flexibility for every person to have a unique grammatical flavor. And that
probably extends to each document as well.

If you want obfuscation you really need something that can do heavy
simplification.

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midgetjones
That's really cool. It reads surprisingly like Chaucer.

~~~
bartread
You say that like it's a good thing.

~~~
robotmay
I generally find Chaucer easier to understand than Shakespeare. Not sure if
I'm alone in that.

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unabst
Couldn't we scramble the font?

It would look completely normal, except the letters and their symbols would be
swapped. When I type "a" it would show as "z" and so on.

The scrambled webfont could be embedded, and the scramble could happen per
font. An OCR or some reverse engineering could decipher the page, but as far
as google indexing and all the modern "reading web content" is concerned, it
would all read as random text.

Call it pagefucker or something. You'd do it to a page, and the result would
be the modified text and the webfont to render it.

Just a thought!

~~~
igorpavlov
"When I type "a" it would show as "z" and so on". Someone mentioned
[http://www.rot13.com/](http://www.rot13.com/) \- is it what you loukyngue
phor? :)

~~~
unabst
Ah yes! But the shift or scramble would be at the font level.

So URYYB would read HELLO. Or rather, the reader reading HELLO will have no
idea the document actually says URYYB as the contents of that text because the
font renders URYYB as HELLO.

Presentation detached from substance.

Without the "key" font it'll just read URYYB.

~~~
vurpo
Frequency analysis makes this kind of cipher very easy to crack...

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saimiam
At the face of it, this seems like a fool's errand.

The upper bound for obfuscation is that the obfuscated text should still be
readable by a human with minimal effort. To read, the average reader will
looks for patterns like "replace j with the y sound." Once these patterns are
determined, coding them into your NLP AI is trivial.

~~~
emodendroket
It doesn't have to be bulletproof to serve its purpose, as anybody who
remembers downloading "Boon Joovi" MP3s from late Napster can attest. And if
some transformations are ambiguous between multiple original spellings, so
much the better.

~~~
saimiam
Since the stated goal of the project is

> The goal of the project is to make text hard to read for computers yet
> fairly easy to read for humans

it has to be close to bulletproof. Humans should be able to decipher
obfuscated text while computers should never be able to decipher the same
obfuscated text. This is going to be impossible since AI is a fast follower to
human ingenuity.

~~~
emodendroket
That's a pretty narrow reading of making it "hard for computers" to do
something.

Think of it this way: the security measures on most homes are completely
inadequate to stop a determined attacker. Nevertheless, they work because most
attacks are opportunistic.

~~~
saimiam
There are far, far, far more incompetent home burglars than competent ones. On
the other hand, only a handful of AI's exist and by definition, they are
getting better and better.

So, using your analogy, when it comes to AI every attacker is a determined
attacker so your security needs to be ~100% bulletproof.

~~~
emodendroket
I think you're making a mistake in assuming sophisticated AI is going to be
used everywhere. This will easily defeat simple word filters, for instance,
which are still commonly used.

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laumars
Interesting idea though I don't agree with his statement:

> _The goal of the project is to make text hard to read for computers yet
> fairly easy to read for humans_

I found it impossibly difficult to read and I'm an native English speaker. I'd
wager people who studied English as a second language might find it harder.

~~~
logicallee
Seconded. Definitely unreadable. For anyone who didn't click through, a line
from their self-chosen sample:

>'kause jou gnaw jusd wuaed thoe sai

~~~
icelancer
I read that as:

'cause you know just what they say

Of which, only 'they' was wrong. Doesn't seem that unreadable.

~~~
logicallee
Which means that it is unreadable - because that's not what it says! You
couldn't read it.

~~~
icelancer
A high, high percentage of the translated text is easily readable. A few edge
cases doesn't make it unreadable.

~~~
laumars
> _A high, high percentage of the translated text is easily readable_

Again, to you _specifically_. Different people have differing abilities at
reading the English language. What you might find easy others would not. In my
case I could not read about 80% of the example text. Which was why I made the
point to discuss specific people (like myself) in my example rather than
assuming everyone would be able to read that text equally competently (like
you are doing).

~~~
icelancer
That's why I didn't respond to you specifically, and only the person asserting
that it's straight-up unreadable. It isn't.

~~~
igorpavlov
I actually appreciate the opinion, that for some people it is difficult to
read such kind of text. I also acknowledge, that some words are too fukt to be
read properly :) However, the fact that this algo was written in one night and
most people say it works, I feel a potential. It is all about polishing the
lib of replacements, which is a part of the algo.

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megapatch
Sorry, I cannot fathom the use for this. It is just harder to read for humans,
CIA and NSA will hardly choke on this and to hide it from Google search there
are far better ways. If you are serious about encryption then just use real
encryption. If not then use ROT-13.

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overcast
Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht
oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist
and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you
can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not
raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

[https://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/people/matt.davis/cmabridge/](https://www.mrc-
cbu.cam.ac.uk/people/matt.davis/cmabridge/)

Plugging those words into google search, and it's not able to make any sense
of it, besides linking to that one article. Wouldn't this be sufficient?

~~~
igorpavlov
The implementation of this is called bbboing [http://www.oik-
plugins.com/oik_shortcodes/bbboing-obfuscate-...](http://www.oik-
plugins.com/oik_shortcodes/bbboing-obfuscate-text-but-leave-it-readable). I
mentioned it on the website:

"The goal of the project is to make text hard to read for computers yet fairly
easy to read for humans (like bbboing, just differently)."

~~~
overcast
Like bbboing, but in my opinion, it's not anywhere near as easy to read as a
human. Yes you can do it, but the link I pasted is nearly indistinguishable in
reading speed.

~~~
igorpavlov
I am not sure I understand, do you mean Cmabridge method is easier to read? If
yes - I agree with you. Spellfucker is just too young and needs a lot of
polishing.

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enord
Try reading it while clicking the "obfuscate again" button. It's almost
easier.

~~~
kensai
True. Because your brain keeps/interprets the easiest version possible. ;)

~~~
enord
That's a bold claim!

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lordnacho
Great for generating something that foreigners will have a hard time with.

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igorpavlov
Disclaimer: I am the creator of the Spellfucker. Please note, this project was
written in one night by a non-native English speaker. Tweaking a library of
replacements would definitely give better results. The algorithm needs
improvements in terms of complexity, but it is not the top priority I think. I
am glad some people actually liked the project and I would be happy if there
are any contributions, especially to the replacement library, so we can work
on it together :) Love, Igor.

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accountyaccount
AKA an English to Welsh translator.

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danso
Though the obfuscation of some common sequences appears to have randomization,
it looks like infrequent patterns are constant, for example, the "obfu" in
"obfuscation" seems to always be fucked as "hobphu". "ob", as in "object",
always seems to turn into "hob", when "awb" and "ahb, plus a randomized
sequence of consecutive `b` characters, would add even more obfuscation.

~~~
clort
\- Not all patterns have more than 1 replacements, which makes them still
easily revertable.

(it says that right there on the page)

------
jaquers
Made a slack app: [https://github.com/jonjaques/slack-
spellfucker](https://github.com/jonjaques/slack-spellfucker)

~~~
igorpavlov
Hahahah, brilliant! :D

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goda90
I'm a native English speaker who learned Spanish as an adult, and for some
reason my brain jumps to pronouncing these unfamiliar words with a Spanish
pronunciation, which made it a struggle to read.

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jerryszczerry
Wow, finally a good orthography for English!

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uranian
cool project, but why not spelphuckar.cum?

~~~
a3n
Maybe for the same reason English-Chinese dictionary covers are in English in
the US.

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iraklism
I like this. I would love to see this being used in APT data exfiltration /
DLP bypasses.

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omarforgotpwd
So this is what we'll use to encrypt our communications when Skynet takes over
I guess.

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bitwize
If this thing ever needs a G-rated name, might I propose "Chaucerizer".

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zhte415
Remarkably like my own spelling when 8 years old.

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andai
This is how I feel reading Old English.

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kensai
Does not work with Greek. :(

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Kiro
What's the use case?

~~~
Kaibeezy
Like a Captcha, I think. Text unparsable by robots. Cover your tracks. That
sort of thing.

Can someone explain it in a straightforward manner, please. Scusi if already
done above.

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karthik_ir
Creative. Nice

~~~
afshinmeh
Wonder what "Creative" means in this context.

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thinknot
To the project creator: you override all the default Bootstrap fonts with
"Lato", which, at least here, doesn't exist.

~~~
igorpavlov
Thank you, fixed.

