Block YouTube Ads on AppleTV by Decrypting and Stripping Ads from Profobuf

Apple TV and iPhone YouTube ads are not blocked by DNS adblockers (e.g. Pi-hole), so I heavily researched this and discovered a flaw in Protobuf that allows me to restrict YouTube ads on Apple TV and iOS by simply changing one byte in the Protobuf responses after decrypting HTTPS network traffic.


Establish a Direct VNC Connection Through a Restrictive Firewall Over Port 443

Sometimes you just want to check in on your home services over public WiFi, but the firewall is smarter than most, and VNC and VNC-related cloud services are blocked. What you do is register a vanity domain name, have it resolve to your home gateway, then use an encrypted VNC session over port 443 (HTTPS).


Build a Secure MFA Web-Browser-Based Remote Desktop Gateway on a Raspberry Pi

Let’s say I’m in a Starbucks or the airport (or both) and I want to connect to my Windows (or OSX or Linux) machine to check on things. Maybe I don’t want to take my primary computer with me on vacation; maybe I’ll just take a Chromebook. Behind a restrictive firewall all we have is port 80 and port 443 (no VNC or RDP allowed), so let’s make a secure web-based remote desktop gateway with a Raspberry Pi, Docker, and Cloudflare.