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Manafort Left an Incriminating Paper Trail Converting PDFs to Word

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Re: Manafort Left an Incriminating Paper Trail Converting PDFs to Word

#91

Post by mbell »

fencepost wrote: post #87

For people thinking that he should have known better on a technical basis, maybe but remember that during the time in question he was a 64-68 year old man (= graduated college around the time Unix was being rewritten in C) who's never worked in a technical field. By the time most of these capabilities existed Manafort had been management/executive for years or decades. That's not to say that he couldn't have learned…

Do you really need a technical background or some sort of college training to find the File > Save As > PDF option?

Re: Manafort Left an Incriminating Paper Trail Converting PDFs to Word

#92

Post by braderhart »

If drug dealers on Tor are smart enough to use GPG to encrypt communications and files, then it does sort of surprise me that these multi-millionaire mafia-type elitist with connections to Russian cybercriminal oligarchs, can't get basic security right.

Re: Manafort Left an Incriminating Paper Trail Converting PDFs to Word

#93

Post by FPGAhacker »

lovefromatx wrote: post #32
lisper wrote: post #4

Nixon was caught because he taped himself obstructing justice. Manafort was caught because he emailed incriminating documents in the clear. How the hell are we going to catch criminals who somehow avoid doing monumentally stupid things?

Different context but Buffett's quote “If a cop follows you for 500 miles, you’re going to get a ticket,” applies here. If you are a criminal you don't violate only one law. You tend to violate multiple laws and at some point you are going to be sloppy.

well, i don't know the context of buffett's quote, what he meant, but i can say with confidence that in the US, even the most upstanding citizen breaks several laws per day.

speed limits, imperfect stops, improper turns from a stop, unsafe lane change, following too closely, breaking too fast...

The problem with a lot of these is the definitions contain imprecise terms subject to an officers whims of interpretation.

And that's just driving. Many laws are just ridiculous and you don't even know they exist to avoid breaking them.

Google "never talk to cops" for an interesting video from a law prof and a cop.

Re: Manafort Left an Incriminating Paper Trail Converting PDFs to Word

#94

Post by jermaustin1 »

untog wrote: post #55
astockwell wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Put that in AWS Lambda and charge $1 each. Boom, Saas-retirement-fund.

$1 is going to struggle to beat free: https://online2pdf.com/remove-pdf-restrictions

I always find it hard to trust free. Even with T&Cs/ToS/Privacy, if I'm not paying for it, I feel that its all lies. Combine that with a site that looks like that, and I'm assuming my PDF will have a virus attached to it.

Re: Manafort Left an Incriminating Paper Trail Converting PDFs to Word

#95

Post by NautilusWave »

Strom wrote: post #70
staunch wrote: post #43

This is an example of bad technology failing its user. These programs should protect user privacy by stripping identifying information by default, allowing the user the option to preserve it. All technology should protect its users by default, otherwise everyone is at risk, not just the bad guys.

> This is an example of bad technology failing its user. I don't think that's fair to say. You can literally import PDF files in Word via the most common File > Open dialog. [1] You can also save as PDF in Word via the File > Save As dialog. [2] These are not exactly some obscure hidden functions. -- [1] https://support.office.com/en-us/article/edit-pdf-content-in... [2] https://support.office.com/en-us/article/save-…

You can also right click a pdf > Open with > Word.

Re: Manafort Left an Incriminating Paper Trail Converting PDFs to Word

#96

Post by braderhart »

mbell wrote: post #91
fencepost wrote: post #87

For people thinking that he should have known better on a technical basis, maybe but remember that during the time in question he was a 64-68 year old man (= graduated college around the time Unix was being rewritten in C) who's never worked in a technical field. By the time most of these capabilities existed Manafort had been management/executive for years or decades. That's not to say that he couldn't have learned…

Do you really need a technical background or some sort of college training to find the File > Save As > PDF option?

Haha.. I don't buy into it either. Something is fishy about the story, or maybe this is a secret plea deal with a behind the scenes type negotiation process to trick other conspirators into providing more evidence.

Re: Manafort Left an Incriminating Paper Trail Converting PDFs to Word

#97

Post by criley2 »

mbell wrote: post #91
fencepost wrote: post #87

For people thinking that he should have known better on a technical basis, maybe but remember that during the time in question he was a 64-68 year old man (= graduated college around the time Unix was being rewritten in C) who's never worked in a technical field. By the time most of these capabilities existed Manafort had been management/executive for years or decades. That's not to say that he couldn't have learned…

Do you really need a technical background or some sort of college training to find the File > Save As > PDF option?

Using File -> Save As -> PDF requires several skills

Window management in Windows GUI:

1. Usage of File Menu and/or Ribbon Menu

2. Knowledge of Word's PDF integration

File System knowledge:

1. What a "file" is

2. What "file formats" are

3. What a PDF is

4. That a word document can be saved or printed as a PDF

Etc etc etc

I work with non-technical folks all the time and printing/saving as PDF comes up often.

Usually in most cases I can install a PDF printer and let them "print to PDF" and they can understand it, but before they know the process, they look at me like I'm speaking Latin when I try to describe what files are, what PDFs are, what conversion is, what the file menu is used for, etc.

Re: Manafort Left an Incriminating Paper Trail Converting PDFs to Word

#98

Post by matt4077 »

delish wrote: post #23
Bucephalus355 wrote: post #3

We all leave huge incriminating paper trails to some extent. This is why privacy is so important, because we’re all committing crimes in theory. That being said Manafort looks very very guilty and his crimes, which are financially based, I think are even more reprehensible in this era of global austerity and low economic growth. Back to the privacy point, we are currently going through NIST 800-53 at work. We only ne…

> Those Enron-esque cross-cut shredders don’t cut it anymore with open source machine learning that can easily reassemble those documents. That's interesting! When I googled for this, I found a few papers, but nothing like a git repository. Do you have more information?

I remember there was also a big effort to reassemble the shredded files by the German Stasi after the fall of the wall, both algorithmically and manually. Not sure if those efforts are ongoing, but it could be another avenue to explore if you are interested.

Re: Manafort Left an Incriminating Paper Trail Converting PDFs to Word

#99

Post by [deleted] »

mbell wrote: post #91
fencepost wrote: post #87

For people thinking that he should have known better on a technical basis, maybe but remember that during the time in question he was a 64-68 year old man (= graduated college around the time Unix was being rewritten in C) who's never worked in a technical field. By the time most of these capabilities existed Manafort had been management/executive for years or decades. That's not to say that he couldn't have learned…

Do you really need a technical background or some sort of college training to find the File > Save As > PDF option?

[deleted]

Re: Manafort Left an Incriminating Paper Trail Converting PDFs to Word

#100

Post by John_KZ »

blensor wrote: post #20
lisper wrote: post #4

Nixon was caught because he taped himself obstructing justice. Manafort was caught because he emailed incriminating documents in the clear. How the hell are we going to catch criminals who somehow avoid doing monumentally stupid things?

I think the problem is not as big because you don't need to have those people do monumentally stupid things all the time. It's sufficient if they do it every so often. And unless someone is an incredibly paranoid person which has the privacy routines ingrained in their DNA, everyone does make stupid mistakes every once in a while.

Also if you're so protective and perfectionist you're not going to actually go through with anything, especially something as risky as fraud. And honestly, when you need something to just work and work right now, you're willing to cut quite some slack with your procedures, which are not designed for emergencies.
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