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Hello, I’m not the usual type of person to come through here but I thought you guys might have a good answer to this. I’m studying to work in animation and I found out recently that they don’t really allow you to keep your work. As an artist, this is a problem because you need to show the art you created on a show in your portfolio to new clients. Most have resorted to stealing their own work back from the companies, locking it up in password protected sites/drives and sending portfolios around that way. The companies have become aware of this and have started annoying new protocols to make sure artists don’t get their work. One is that if you plug anything into a USB port, they’re alerted and come harass you to ask if you’re using a USB. (Artists all work on company owned computers.) The other is that some can monitor screens to see what you’re doing. Generally all artwork is uploaded into a server, and they can see what you’re doing on there. The older technique I heard was just dragging the stuff to your desktop, disconnecting from the server, then putting it on a USB. But clearly this won’t work anymore. A professor of mine said that in the USB monitoring event he just wore them down by repeatedly plugging in his iPod, pretending to be charging it, and then stealing all his documents on the iPod. If you guys can think of any strategies to get around this type of thing I’d be grateful and pass it on to others in my field. We’re not doing anything illicit, we just want our work so we can get new jobs. Thanks in advance!

What you're looking for is called data exfiltration. Long story short you'll probably want to encrypt the data and then send it via some innocuous encrypted service (such as https). It really depends on what network security they have though. Having physical access gives you some more options as well and there'll be less information online about it as it's not a common situation for hackers. If you can unplug the network cable you could try replacing it with a cable to a network drive so it doesn't show up as a USB event. If you can take the side off the pc you might be able to just plug another drive in via sata. If all else fails, or you're very worried about getting caught. I think the most sure method is to simply take a photograph of your screen.

>>4175 >I’m studying to work in animation and I found out recently that they don’t really allow you to keep your work. >(Artists all work on company owned computers.) If someone is paying you money to produce intellectual properly and gives you equipment to do it then that work belongs to your employer. That's the law in every civilized country. Of course you can't take it home with you, that's stealing. If you employer also claims to own any intellectual property you produce at home in your free time on your own computer then that's different (but still not uncommon in places like the US).

>>4177 >If you employer also claims to own any intellectual property you produce at home in your free time on your own computer then that's different In codemonkey territory they can claim your home production is based on the work of your job / done in job time. Basically if you develop anything usefull and they can steal it they have a good chance for it unless your work is completly different. Same soykaf happens btw in university. Good luck defending yourself against a professor stealing a student's work.

>>4177 it's a joke when capitalist sh!lls call a faulty system civilized, especially when it makes workers unmarketable. this is actually fair use.

>>4177 Disney are notorious for this. They make you sign contracts giving them ownership of anything you create, from a restaurant napkin doodle to little animals made out of wet toilet paper. And if you ever make it big later on, they have an army of lawyers to argue that you created whatever it is on their time, with their equipment.

>>4184 >it's a joke when capitalist sh!lls call a faulty system civilized, You exchanged your time and skills for money. You can't take the money and the intellectual property. That's just theft. >especially when it makes workers unmarketable. How does it make you unmarketable? The work still goes on your resume. If you want a personal portfolio then you need to do it in your personal time. >>4183 >In codemonkey territory they can claim your home production is based on the work of your job / done in job time. It can be worse than that. Large US corporation bought local company I worked for. They wanted everyone to sign a new contract making all our open source and side projects belonging to them. A lot of people were saying contract like that is illegal in this country but who wants to take a billion dollar multinational to court and find out?

Y'all I'm very glad you're invested in politics but can we return to my original question? If you have a personal problem with people stealing their own work back that's fine, your business, don't answer me. But this isn't meant to be a debate forum. I just want to know ways to get around computer surveillance so that I can keep an updated portfolio. Also, I feel like I should mention that it does indeed impact our marketability. If you worked for some big studio that's fine to put down, but if they can't see your work they won't really care. It's all portfolio based in animation. People in animation, video games, TV, your favorite entertainment industries, are stealing their own work back from studios. It's a part of the game. If you dislike that, don't work in our field.

>>4185 Also you're right about Disney. It's not just Disney though, it's a number of other big time studios. Disney is the nastiest though. I know a professor right now who worked for Disney all his career and now he's trying to get an art book published. Nearly impossible. Poor old guy has had to wait five years and still no concrete answer from the ratman. I would never work for them, and I know a lot of other artists who feel the same way.

>>4187 >If you have a personal problem with people stealing their own work back that's fine, your business, don't answer me. You are missing the point. Lains are pointing out that what you are planning is against the law so it is not only a technical problem. If you take work from your current company and show it to another company when you apply for a job, you could get into legal problems. Companies may also not want to give you a job in the future if they know you will take work away when you leave. I don't know about animation but in software people go to jail for doing that. So make sure you know what you're doing. >Also, I feel like I should mention that it does indeed impact our marketability. If you worked for some big studio that's fine to put down, but if they can't see your work they won't really care. It is like this in software too. That's why people do open source work and build up stackoverflow reputation. If you are too lazy to build your personal portfolio in your personal time that's not because the world is unfair. >Y'all I'm very glad you're invested in politics but can we return to my original question? I guess you are sufficiently warned. What would be helpful in details about the monitoring software they use. It must have a name or at least a manufacturer name. Tell us the operating system too. It is difficult to defeat a system if you don't know what it is or how it works. If your hard drive is not encrypted and there is no tamper prevention on the case, I would stay late and take the harddrive home and then come early and put it back. Make sure you do a bit for bit copy of the drive with dd or mount it read only from another operating system. Don't put it into your own PC and boot it up because that will modify data on the drive and leave forensic evidence.

>>4189 >If your hard drive is not encrypted and there is no tamper prevention on the case, I would stay late and take the harddrive home and then come early and put it back. Make sure you do a bit for bit copy of the drive with dd or mount it read only from another operating system. Don't put it into your own PC and boot it up because that will modify data on the drive and leave forensic evidence. If you workstation bios allows booting from cd/usb then booting into a live system and copying the files at work without removing the harddrive will achieve the same thing.

>>4175 >>4177 >>4186

>>4194 The law is the law regardless of your personal morality.

The strategy to get your work back will really depend on the security system of whatever place you end up working in so for them moment there is no clear way to help you. having work that the studio doesn't know about could also work but I imagine that'll be hella difficult. Do not be concerned at the moment but once you land a job you should start thinking.

>>4196 I kind of not want to write this but ignore the naysayers, it's clear they were educated outside of art and humanities and the working environment for art and animation are different from whatever they come from.

>>4197 >ignore the naysayers, it's clear they were educated outside of art and humanities and the working environment for art and animation are different from whatever they come from. It's different because the law doesn't apply to you? There's no point asking how to rob a bank if you have no way spend the money afterwards. That's what people are saying.

>>4175 Your question is like asking for help cracking proprietary software so you can use it gratis, when workable libre alternatives exist. You sign a contract with an abusive company: give me shekels and you can stretch out my boipucci subject to the negotiated terms. Then you come here asking for a good lube. You can do better. Patreon, buttcoin, etc. make it easier than ever to get paid for your artwork directly from by people who enjoy it. Find a job that doesn’t claim ownership over your art, and adjust your lifestyle accordingly. Or: If you’re too enamored by all the accoutrements of bougiose life to risk given it up, then best get used to being fuarrked in the ass. Embrace it. Train yourself to enjoy it. Learn to love Big Brother and stop faffing around with these limpwristed half-measures.

>The law It'll be fine. As much as I've no experience with the industry myself it seems that all the employers are doing this to prevent employees from being able to leave their jobs easily. So when you give a new employer your portfolio they'll know how you got it and will be careful about not getting you into trouble. After all they want you to come work for them. You'll probably need to study their security first so you know what you're up against and can figure out a plan to get round it.

>>4199 this. the best practice in this case is, do not enter into a contract with a company with policies in which you have no stake in, and which keep you under lock and key with no rights to privacy. you read about some of these places like The Goog where they watch even the links employees hover over but don't click, and fire people for having conversations with coworkers about the policies like c'mon man. you have to destitute the world of corporate art by refusing to work as a mindless drone in their bee colony. where there is a will, there is a way.

The idea of "working on patreon and freelancing" etc is extremely idealistic and naive. Being a working artist is a hard job, that's competitive. We already don't make a lot of money, and are sacrificing a lot to create things as a profession. So no, I'm not going to walk away from a job with benefits so that I can get out from under the boss man's thumb. At least not until I have something else lined up. If you want to criticize the practices of working artists, then go work as an artist for a few years, or rather, try and work as one. See where it gets you.

>>4203 >>Find a job that doesn’t claim ownership over your art, and adjust your lifestyle accordingly. suggests a wage-slave kind of job, like barista/waiter/cashier, and a corresponding lifestyle. Starving artists produce good work. But then, some people value a trendy apartment, pricey hardware, etc. over “mere” principles. These people can sleep in the bed they’ve made.

>>4203 If you're OP I will suggest you to walk away from this thread now. People here seems really unaware of how work in art/humanities is like. Look at >>4208 it's even kind of insulting I already gave you some advice earlier on the thread stick to that.

>>4209 >EVERYONE IS AN IDIOT EXCEPT ME >RAGE SAGE On topic posts as far as I can tell >>4176 >>4189 >>4193 >>4196 Respond to one of these to move the thread forward OP.

>>4210 Alternatively, refer to the data exfiltration thread.

>>4221 That thread was about a dude who knows how to code extracting data from a laptop he has private access to at home and on his own network. I think the environment is sufficiently different which is why no one mentioned it.

>>4195 Copyright infringement is not stealing or piracy. Lawyers have been derezzed from using the terms piracy or stealing to describe copyright infringement in previous court cases within the USA. >Judge Kathleen Williams decided that the movie studios and its witnesses are not allowed to use “pejorative” terms including “piracy,” “theft” and “stealing” during the upcoming proceedings. https://torrentfreak.com/mpaa-derezzed-from-using-piracy-and-theft-terms-in-hotfile-trial-131129/ Copyright infringement is not stealing or piracy and cannot be called that in a court of law because the law is the law regardless of your morality.

Just wanted to say, use in a portfolio is fine if the art isn't secret. Regardless of who owns the piece, you as the creator are simply showing them what you made. its not theft or copyright infringement.

>>4291 >Copyright infringement is not stealing or piracy and cannot be called that in a court of law because the law is the law regardless of your morality. The line you quoted clearly states that this is an ad-hoc restriction on a specific court case. It's not the law. It's also a case about file sharing. This thread is about an employee removing ip from company property without permission. I'm not sure what they're call that if not theft.

>>4175 Are employees in this place being monitored in any other ways, like a camera pointed at their physical body? Does the iPod method no longer work? do you have access to any other types of ports other than usb? Do IT people ever come to the artists' workstations to troubleshoot problems in person that might be sympathetic?

>>4175 Run portable NAS + wifi, wifi-pineapple, etc. Connect and upload art. turn off computer. Turn on computer & boot from Linux "Live" USB install, select "try [distro] - no changes to computer". Access computer's hard drive, transfer files to USB, reboot computer, no trace of activity. There are smartphone apps that take photos every N seconds automatically. Use one of those, put phone in pocket facing screen. do work. Go home, download images, use FFMPEG to create time-lapse video of your drawing. There are coffee cups that have hidden USB drives. Do the "ipod" trick, but store the files on the hidden coffee cup drive. If they check the ipod, there won't be any files there. Additional sneaky USB: Cut a hole in the sole of a shoe and stash a USB drive in there. Use a USB extension cable to run from the shoe to the computer. Dispose of cable in trash bin if they're checking things going out. Mail the cable to yourself along with replacement digital pen or other needed supply. If caught, just give away the cable saying, "must have accidentally ordered this, but I don't need it". use wifi pineapple trick + high gain directional antenna & connect to (possibly crack) the network from outside. Some machines have infra red data ports. You can use an IR port to ex-filtrate data. There are specialized blutooth exfiltration technologies... It will all depend on the environment. Paste us a sketch of the floorplan & elevator maintenance schedule. I'll go watch "Sneakers" then plan our animoo heist.

>muh law glitterboyry If everyone in the industry is breaking that law anyways, then the law doesn't matter in the first place. >>4176 >I think the most sure method is to simply take a photograph of your screen. This, keep it simple stupid.

Maybe one day OP will come back and give us more details on the setup. But considering the iPod trick works, swapping out the network cable and copying stuff over to the NAS just might work as well. From a software perspective, the most robust solution is to of course take a picture of your screen (easy) or intercept the signals traveling through the hdmi (hard).

I dunno, how about asking them if you could use your best work in your portfolio?

>>5531 This thread was only bumped because of the spambot. OP is long gone.

>>4183 >In codemonkey territory they can claim your home production is based on the work of your job / done in job time. Basically if you develop anything usefull and they can steal it they have a good chance for it unless your work is completly different. That soykaf is illegal in my country. > Same soykaf happens btw in university. Good luck defending yourself against a professor stealing a student's work. If my prof can falsify cryptographic signatures and fool stylometric analysis I applaud them.

If you know they're only watching USB, then use bluetooth, or ad-hoc wifi. But you are on hardware they control, nothing is beyond their reach if they invest the time and effort. If they catch you, you now have a bigger problem when finding a new job than no portfolio. Under these circumstances then, your best bet is to have a separate device. Something like van eck phreaking. A device you control, which exploits the natural operation of the device they control. One example is the pita bread that steals your crypto keys, https://thehackernews.com/2015/06/how-to-hack-computers.html In that case, there's almost no way they will catch you unless they have physical security screening to find your device. They may not have the right to take or search your device even if they find it, but they might decide to fire you if you don't allow them.

I'll say it again as I did before: Copyright infringement == Commodity Value Depreciation

if your workplace as wifi, why not try using airdrop or a piratebox. if they don't see if you can set up a Ethernet sniffer that grabs all the pictures they easy to buy and they're plug and play. >>5636 >sh!lling for multi national corporations that are actively keeping you from using your own work? >Doing so on a lowlife cyberpunk hong kong image sharing site of all things... Do you buy the rights before using any reaction image?

I know this is a necro thread, but if you're on Windows, you could use alternate data streams.

>>4175 Other stupid idea : use a HDMI recorder plugged between your screen and the computer. If they notice any changes claim that the screen was behaving strange. (make them think fo something akin to bad cable) You just need a HDMI recorder with enough capacity to record enough time. The downside is that only low res will work with this method except if you do recompose the pictures manually. Otherwise try converting the pictures to sound with enough recovery signals and record the computer output with a audio recorder. The hardpart will be to get such a conversion running on the computer, but once it's running you basically modem your whole work through the audio channel, that you record using an audio recorder. You could leak the whole file this way, but once again, it's running on the computer. If you do wanna play terrorist from hell, you could try to "fall" for a bad phising link in the E-mail and thereby let a scrapper script run on your computer. The script should just mail home some files, overwrite itself and turn into 1-2-3 badly written ransomware. An employer would not get pissed that one of it's employees clicked on a good phising, you'd get the IT guys tell you to be more careful, but well that's it.

You can get ethernet-to-wireless adapters. Unplug ethernet cable, plug in wireless adapter, connect to mobile hotspot, email your stuff home.