Thinking of launching a cyber-essentials course for aspiring white collar criminals. What are the easiest online training platforms.
j/k
Manafort Left an Incriminating Paper Trail Converting PDFs to Word
161–170 of 238 posts
Re: Manafort Left an Incriminating Paper Trail Converting PDFs to Word
#162Nixon 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?
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Re: Manafort Left an Incriminating Paper Trail Converting PDFs to Word
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. Conversion to PDF 'flattens' the document.
In what way do you mean flattened? Authorship and metadata? No, that is often still present, and many tools will include author and software data by default. Layers? No, PDFs can have extensive layers.
> In what way do you mean flattened?
Surely in the context of the episode we're talking about: the discovery of the $4M in fraudulent income claimed in the document. In the Word document, that edit would be discoverable. In PDF it is not.
You seem to be making an abstract argument about "PDF security" here. The point of the subthread is a practical point about whether Manafort was correctly generating a fraudulent document or whether he was being a technical rube. He was doing the fraud the right way.
Re: Manafort Left an Incriminating Paper Trail Converting PDFs to Word
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
$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.
I don't pay anything to use HackerNews. How much do you pay?
Re: Manafort Left an Incriminating Paper Trail Converting PDFs to Word
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think that has a lot more to do with prosecutors never going after executive because they are buddy-buddy. Martin Shkreli is a perfect example of a CEO that can get canned when it is decided he should be.
Reading the book, "The Chicken Shit Club", it's a combination of the prosecutors being buddy buddy with the big defense lawyer firms (someone who has a reputation for going after white collar crime and being aggressive about it might not get a job with the big defense firms after their time in the DOJ or SEC or what have you), and Congress being buddy buddy with the execs and getting upset when the DOJ does their job…
exactly the book I was thinking of when writing my comment! (:
Re: Manafort Left an Incriminating Paper Trail Converting PDFs to Word
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
People pass on the right because people block the passing lane. It shouldn’t be possible in most cases to pass on the right.
Rant: I see this in the Bay Area all the time. On many freeways, the fast lane is also the carpool/HOV lane, at least during high-traffic times. The idea is that the government wants to encourage carpooling and/or low-emissions vehicles, therefore restricting the fast lane to such people would encourage such things. But I often see people get in the fast lane not because they want to go faster than the adjacent lane,…
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Re: Manafort Left an Incriminating Paper Trail Converting PDFs to Word
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
In what way do you mean flattened? Authorship and metadata? No, that is often still present, and many tools will include author and software data by default. Layers? No, PDFs can have extensive layers.
>>In what way do you mean flattened? The document becomes uneditable by most commonly used PDF readers (Adobe Reader DC, web browsers, etc.). You can still edit it, but changing the actual content becomes substantially more difficult.
Editing a PDF is relatively simple with the appropriate tools, and PDFs are not "flattened" by any of the typical definitions I am familiar with. Numerous PDF editors exist, and the standard is well documented (ISO 32000) and freely published online by Adobe. Signing a PDF is a more effective method to prevent tampering, as compared to relying on people only having PDF readers.
Re: Manafort Left an Incriminating Paper Trail Converting PDFs to Word
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
Buffet's quote applies to non-criminals as well.
"The average professional in this country wakes up in the morning, goes to work, comes home, eats dinner, and then goes to sleep, unaware that he or she has likely committed several federal crimes that day. Why?" Three Felonies a Day http://www.harveysilverglate.com/books/
I heard about this several years ago. I've spent much time thinking about it since and I don't have a clue how we could go about fixing this.
It seems to me that concentrated benefits and diffuse costs seems to skew US laws towards, say, tyranny. We just don't realize it until it's prosecuted like we are conditioned to think tyranny presents itself. I imagine there are plenty of people in the US that already feel it as if living under the US legal system is already tyranny.
BTW - is "tyranny" even the right word for this? I feel like when federal prosecutors only have to actually present their case in 2% of charges to juries by using/abusing the plea bargain system to scare the defendant into submission with a ridiculous opening bid, it feels like something odious.
Re: Manafort Left an Incriminating Paper Trail Converting PDFs to Word
#169OT: Does this have ANYTHING to do w/ Trump Russia Collusion?
Separate OT: Do we know any political party that colluded, in primaries? Or that received foreign $? Or used 'bots' to make it seem like they have support? Or that had it's operatives use state instruments to disrupt the opposing party?
Re: Manafort Left an Incriminating Paper Trail Converting PDFs to Word
#170There are certain things I cannot believe are still this difficult with as advanced as user-friendly technology is: sending files to someone else, and converting documents. Sending files to someone else is a problem with a ton of solutions, some of them better than others, but none of them actually solving the problem. Email often has size limits and spam filters block certain attachments. Dropbox is often restricted…
What's up with reading Visio documents on OSX anyway? Why should that be so hard? What business decision drove not supplying Visio with the Office stuff on Mac anyway? They give you Excel, Word, OneNote, PPT etc but not that.
Visio was a separate product by a separate company until well after Office was established. Then MS bought it and (sorta) integrated it into the Office suite. I'm betting that Visio is still very different under the hood compared to the rest of Office.