Base64 code in Attila theme found and then removed by author?

Themes
1

I was looking at the CSS of Attila theme (GitHub - zutrinken/attila: Ghost Theme) downloaded from the official marketplace because since I’ve started using it, requests on my website through cloudflare go up to 46k per day, most of them (80%) of the “emtpy” type. I found some Base64 code in the style.css that has been so far removed by the author (after I made him notice the presence), but I had a backup. I could decode some of it and it seemed to be just a duplicate of the readable CSS, but some of it I couldn’t decode. I am attaching the original file before the Base64 was removed.

https://pastebin.com/jvqWFLUK

Since I’m very ignorant in this matter: what would the use of Base64 in a CSS file be?
Base64 is at line 2194, on a single line and very long.

N.B.
I am a great fan of the theme, it looks like great work to me, and I just want to confirm that is more about my ignorance than anything else.

2

What you’re seeing is called a “Source Map”, in this case it’s an inline source map. Source maps are usually generated when you compile CSS using a css-preprocessor or when you minify your CSS - they allow you to view the original CSS when using your browser’s dev tools.

Typically you’d have source maps compiled into separate .map files such as screen.css.map for efficiency.

3

Thank you Kevin, this is really helpful. Please feel free to remove the thread if you think this is appropriate and would lead to less confusion for more experienced and savvy users.