Ass Ascii Smuggling Surfa

# ASS - ASCII Smuggling Surfacer

Browser extension that detects and visualizes invisible Unicode characters used in text steganography & smuggling attacks.

Full-fidelity port of the [`aid`](https://github.com/wunderwuzzi23/aid) Python CLI scanner.

## Features

- 🔍 **50+ invisible character types** — zero-width, directional marks, Unicode tags, variation selectors (VS1–VS256), invisible operators, and more
- 🎯 **Smart severity scoring** — color-coded (info → critical) based on consecutive run length and total volume
- 🏷️ **Unicode tag decoding** — reveals hidden ASCII messages encoded in U+E0000–U+E007F
- 🌈 **Visual highlighting** — glowing overlays on detected characters with severity colors
- 💬 **Hover tooltips** — character name, code point, run length, category
- 📊 **Category breakdown** — mirrors the Python tool's 10-category classification
- 📋 **Detail panel** — full detection report with highlight occurrence
- 🔓 **Dynamic Payload Decoder** — custom map '0' and '1' bit characters to decode hidden binary back to ASCII
- 🎛️ **Advanced Filtering** — autocomplete, fuzzy search, sequence length limits, and category toggles for granular detection control
- 📤 **Export** — JSON and CSV reports matching the Python output format
- ⚙️ **Configurable** — toggle confusable spaces, control chars (Cc), space separators (Zs)
- ↕️ **Expand All** — instantly expand or collapse all detected hidden text on the page from the detail panel
- 🔒 **Privacy-first** — runs entirely locally, no data collection
- 🛸 **Hitchhiker's Guide Theme** — auto-triggers on high-volume detections with a retro terminal aesthetic and dynamic calming notice

## Usage

1. **Click the ASS icon** in the toolbar
2. **Press "Scan This Page"** in the popup
3. View highlighted invisible characters on the page
4. **Hover** over highlights for character details
5. **Click** highlights to expand decoded text inline
6. **Toggle Detail Panel** for the full report with category breakdown and export
- 🛸 **Consult the Guide** — In Hitchhiker mode, look for the inline link in the header to jump straight to the details

### Settings

| Setting | Default | Description |
|---------|---------|-------------|
| Auto-scan pages | Off | Scan every page automatically |
| Sequence length filter | 1-0 | Min/Max limits for consecutive run highlighting (0 = no max limit) |
| Fuzzy Search | Off | Match all words anywhere in the Detection Filter name or hex code |
| Detect NO-BREAK SPACE | Off | Specifically isolate U+00A0 detection |
| Detect confusable spaces | Off | Thin space, hangul filler, etc. (excludes NBSP if toggled separately) |
| Detect control chars (Cc) | Off | Unicode Cc category (excludes TAB/LF/CR) |
| Detect space separators (Zs) | Off | Unicode Zs category (excludes ASCII space) |
| Auto-Hitchhiker | Off | Automatically switch to the HHG theme on suspicious pages |
| HHG Threshold | 8 | Total code points required to trigger the guide theme |

## Suspicion Levels

| Level | Badge | Condition |
|-------|-------|-----------|
| 🔴 Critical | Red | Consecutive run ≥ 40 |
| 🟠 High | Orange | Run ≥ 10, or total > 100 sparse |
| 🟡 Medium | Yellow | Total 10–100, sparse |
| 🔵 Info | Blue | Total < 10 |

## Detected Character Types

### Always Detected
- **Unicode Tags** (U+E0000–U+E007F) — decoded to ASCII
- **Zero-Width & Joiners** — ZWSP, ZWNJ, ZWJ, Word Joiner, CGJ, ZWNBSP
- **Directional & Bidi Marks** — LRM, RLM, embeddings, overrides, isolates
- **Variation Selectors** — VS1–VS16 (U+FE00–U+FE0F) and VS17–VS256 (U+E0100–U+E01EF)
- **Invisible Operators** — function application, invisible times/separator/plus
- **Deprecated Format Controls** — U+206A–U+206F

### Optional (Settings)
- **NO-BREAK SPACE** — U+00A0
- **Confusable Spaces** — Soft hyphen, quads, thin/hair space, braille blank, hangul filler
- **Control Characters (Cc)** — all Cc except TAB/LF/CR
- **Space Separators (Zs)** — all Zs except ASCII space

## Privacy

This extension processes all data entirely on your device. No data is collected, transmitted, or stored externally. All scanning occurs in your browser's local memory only.

## License

MIT License

## Test Tool for creating hidden text

https://embracethered.com/blog/ascii-smuggler.html