Dan Petro, lead researcher at Bishop Fox discovered that pixelation or blurring of text or images may not be the best way to conceal information or identity. He had successfully demonstrated how to decipher pixelated or blurred text using the pixelation method. Petro had also released a GitHub tool, Unredactor, that can be used to reconstruct pixelated or blurred text, as shown in the GIF above.
Petro responded to an open challenge to decipher pixelated text hosted by Jumpsec Labs. Caleb Herbert at Jumpsec Labs confirmed that his guess was correct.
Other reconstruction tools exist, including the Google Brain (top, able to reconstruct low res images) and Depix (bottom, able to partially recover pixelated text). Petro found that Depix fell short in real-world scenarios.
He outlined his findings in a Bishop Fox blogpost.
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Image source: Dan Petro at Bishop Fox