Ads are per se bloaty. Related to Software maybe the term Bloatware comes handy. But it’s not good if you couldn’t improve it. In this case the amount of bloat: Online Ads are better protected for some ad-distributors by storing them base64 encoded and “linked” into CSS. for example:
background:transparent url(data:image/png;base64,+jmzYAAAAGXRFWHRTb2Z0d2 [...]
(Exemplary code only, not a real image file)
That pretty much works well against Ad-Block Plus but well, infact it shows how to bloat even more. Base64 encoding takes 1/3 more of the space compared to a standard binary notation.
As an additional improvement, the CSS code can base64 encoded again and then linked in the html header. This will remove “URL” completely which is working towards most of content filters because they use “URL” a lot.
Since Noscript’s main coder’s website is using the method describben above, how high are the chances that the Noscript Plugin will protect us against embedded URLs which are pretty dangerous in the context of XSS / CSFR attacks. Never?
