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How I reverse-engineered Google Docs to play back any document's keystrokes

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Re: How I reverse-engineered Google Docs to play back any document's keystrokes

#61

Post by Adirael »

r00fus wrote: post #35
michaelx386 wrote: post #26

I broke out in to a cold sweat watching this as I remembered all the times I've inadvertently pasted sensitive stuff in to a document. It's still very cool though, I'll just need to remember to be careful when sharing documents.

I wonder how much sensitive information is inadvertently pasted into a browser location bar or autofill text box that's silently captured by web apps like Google Docs? I know I've accidentally done the "paste password" into those places accidentally at times.

I had a bad habit of using it to remove style from pasted text. Shift+CMD+V (or something like that, muscle memory) does the trick, but I didn't know that a few years ago.

Re: How I reverse-engineered Google Docs to play back any document's keystrokes

#63

Post by userbinator »

This is one of the reasons why it's great that the source code of web pages/apps is (relatively, compared to binaries) easy to reverse-engineer - because of their environment inside a browser, web apps have such a low barrier to "phoning home" and making requests that privacy-sensitive information being leaked may otherwise be difficult to notice. Imagine if they were all encrypted/obfuscated binaries...

I don't use Google Docs (and probably never will), but if I did, all those requests - "these /save calls every time I typed something" - would be enough for me to investigate why it's generating so much traffic. I'm using an OS that still has a useful network activity indicator icon, so I easily know when there's data being transmitted/received when there shouldn't be.

There's a line of thought that says those sorts of indicators are unnecessary and a distraction, and that maybe valid justification for removing them, but I can't help feeling like their removal is making users more unaware of what their machines are doing - and thus easier for companies to do things like this to them.

Re: How I reverse-engineered Google Docs to play back any document's keystrokes

#64

Post by [deleted] »

getsaf wrote: post #56
scott_karana wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've tried to use a clipboard manager for years to help obviate this sort of issue. I'm currently using ClipMenu on OSX, which hits all the right needs for me. Anyone have a suggestion for Windows?

I'm not sure how this helps the issue but here's a great windows clipboard manager. http://ditto-cp.sourceforge.net/

[deleted]

Re: How I reverse-engineered Google Docs to play back any document's keystrokes

#65

Post by fillskills »

brk wrote: post #38
fillskills wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this a practised habit? I mean, when you started out, did you do more revisions on paper and less in your head?

Yes, it's a practiced habit. I found that when I first started writing regularly I would spend a lot of time doing constant editing similar to the example shown in the linked article. This would become distracting and time consuming, then I'd forget other things I had wanted to say. So I found it better, for me, to just kind of write things in my head first and then sit down and write -almost more transcribing vs. "w…

Thanks, thats really helpful for me. I am just starting to learn to write blog articles for my business and I certainly do a LOT of editing. Glad to see someone progress to where I want to be at... one day

Re: How I reverse-engineered Google Docs to play back any document's keystrokes

#66

Post by traek »

userbinator wrote: post #63

This is one of the reasons why it's great that the source code of web pages/apps is (relatively, compared to binaries) easy to reverse-engineer - because of their environment inside a browser, web apps have such a low barrier to "phoning home" and making requests that privacy-sensitive information being leaked may otherwise be difficult to notice. Imagine if they were all encrypted/obfuscated binaries... I don't use…

When you say that "privacy-sensitive information" is "being leaked", you make it sound much worse than it is. The information being sent seems completely normal for an online word processor with a revision history, and it's not being "leaked" to anyone besides the company providing the word processor.

Re: How I reverse-engineered Google Docs to play back any document's keystrokes

#67

Post by yzzxy »

6stringmerc wrote: post #45

Clever, very clever. As somebody who has worked full-time, over-time, and essentially in my sleep with Word files, PowerPoints, and highly sensitive bid documentation...yeah, I have to agree working in the cloud for this kind of stuff strikes me as career suicide. Maybe not in your turf, re: software development, but with respect to management, operations and marketing people, there should only be one person with the…

Even if you are working on something that is not security/negotiation sensitive, this is still scary, and the layman can approximate it with Google docs document history and the like.

Document history enables thoughtcrime detection, especially as it becomes more and more atomic towards actual keystrokes. I wonder how long it will be until typed and deleted text is used as evidence in a court of law.

Re: How I reverse-engineered Google Docs to play back any document's keystrokes

#68

Post by jacquesm »

brk wrote: post #13
kens wrote: post #4

I find it fascinating to see how much deleting and rewriting the author did on the first two sentences of his Atlantic article. You can see the idea getting rewritten in many ways. Is this a typical way to write a magazine article? I wouldn't have expected so much time revising the opening sentences before getting the rest of the article in place. (But there's probably a lot of variation between writers.)

I've written a fair number of magazine articles, and also a lot of white papers and other documents. For me, I usually spend a day or two just thinking about it in my head. Going over what would be a logical thought flow and things like that. When I sit down to actually write , I tend to have very few revisions. My first draft is much closer to the typical persons 5th draft (I think), but that's because I've been rev…

You remind me of a Japanese artist that envisioned the movements he was going to make to make his painting for a long time and then when he finally started moving the painting was done extremely fast. I forgot his name but I thought it was fascinating. I agonize over the first line of whatever I have to write for a long time but once that first line is done the rest goes easy.
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