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New information extracted from Snowden PDFs through metadata version analysis

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Re: New information extracted from Snowden PDFs through metadata version analysis

#121

Post by nebezb »

dfreel wrote: post #21
maqp wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It is of course very telling that Snowden ended up in Russia. Yeah it's almost like you can revoke someone's passport during their layover in Russia and make the people with MAGA-levels of intelligence take the optics at face value through decade long repeated messaging. If Snowden was a Russian spy, he would've taken the files, given them to Putin, received the largest Datša in the country and we would never have h…

[flagged]

> Very naive to think that the Russian and Chinese governments didn't get a full copy of the documents Snowden stole and absconded with.

Does one need to be gullible to believe this? Or will you substantiate your extraordinary claim?

Re: New information extracted from Snowden PDFs through metadata version analysis

#122

Post by theturtletalks »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #119
theturtletalks wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New OSINT skill unlocked

I see an interesting parallel to how people think about captured encrypted data, and how long that encryption needs to be effective for until technology catches up and can decrypt (by which point, hopefully the decrypted data is worthless). If all of these documents are stored in durable archives, future methodologies may arrive to extract value or intelligence not originally available at the time of capture and disc…

> If all of these documents are stored in durable archives, future methodologies may arrive to extract value or intelligence not originally available at the time of capture and disclosure.

I recently learned that some people improve or brush up on their OSINT skills by trying to find missing people!

Re: New information extracted from Snowden PDFs through metadata version analysis

#123

Post by detourdog »

ajross wrote: post #93
layer8 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think this was particularly modeled on MS Word. The incremental update feature was introduced with PDF 1.2 in 1996. It allows to quickly save changes without having to rewrite the whole file, for example when annotating a PDF. Incremental updates are also essential for PDF signatures, since when you add a subsequent signature to a PDF, you couldn’t rewrite the file without breaking previous signatures. Hence…

PDF files are for storing fixed (!!) output of printed/printable material. That's where the format's roots are via Postscript, it's where the format found its main success in document storage, and it's the metaphor everyone has in mind when using the format. PDFs don't change. PDFs are what they look like. Except they aren't, because Adobe wanted to be able to (ahem) "annotate" them, or "save changes" to them. And Ad…

When Acrobat came out cross platform was not common. Being able to publish a document that could be opened on multiple platforms was a big advantage. I was using it to distribute technical specifications in the mid 90's. Different pages of these specifications came from, Filemaker, Excel, Word, Mini-Cad, Photoshop, Illustrator, and probably other applications as well. We would combine these into a single PDF file. This simplified version control. This also meant that bidders could not edit the specifications.

None of that could be accomplished with Word alone. I think you are underestimating the qualities of PDF for distribution of complex documents.

Re: New information extracted from Snowden PDFs through metadata version analysis

#125

Post by anthk »

layer8 wrote: post #76
cubefox wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't there file systems that support data structures which allow editing just part of the data, like linked lists?

Look at the C file API which most software is based on, it simply doesn’t allow it. Writing at a given file position just overwrites existing content. There is no way to insert or remove bytes in the middle. Apart from that, file systems manage storage in larger fixed-size blocks (commonly 4 KB). One block typically links to the next block (if any) of the same file, but that’s about the extent of it.

DD should.

Re: New information extracted from Snowden PDFs through metadata version analysis

#126

Post by altfredd »

PhilipRoman wrote: post #95
cubefox wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't there file systems that support data structures which allow editing just part of the data, like linked lists?

Yeah there are, Linux supports parameters FALLOC_FL_INSERT_RANGE and FALLOC_FL_COLLAPSE_RANGE for fallocate(2). Like most fancy filesystem features, they are not used by the vast majority of software because it has to run on any filesystem so you'd always need to maintain two implementations (and extensive test cases).

They are fully supported almost everywhere. XFS, ext4, tmpfs, f2fs and a bunch of misc filesystems all support them.

Ext4 support dates as early as Linux 3.15, released in 2014. It is ancient at this point!

Re: New information extracted from Snowden PDFs through metadata version analysis

#127

Post by ajross »

detourdog wrote: post #123
ajross wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PDF files are for storing fixed (!!) output of printed/printable material. That's where the format's roots are via Postscript, it's where the format found its main success in document storage, and it's the metaphor everyone has in mind when using the format. PDFs don't change. PDFs are what they look like. Except they aren't, because Adobe wanted to be able to (ahem) "annotate" them, or "save changes" to them. And Ad…

When Acrobat came out cross platform was not common. Being able to publish a document that could be opened on multiple platforms was a big advantage. I was using it to distribute technical specifications in the mid 90's. Different pages of these specifications came from, Filemaker, Excel, Word, Mini-Cad, Photoshop, Illustrator, and probably other applications as well. We would combine these into a single PDF file. Th…

> This also meant that bidders could not edit the specifications.

But they can! That's the bug, PDF is a mutable file format owing to Adobe's muckery. And you made the same mistake that every government redactor and censor (up to and including the ?!@$! NSA per the linked article) has in the intervening decades.

The file format you thought you were using was a great fit for your problem, and better than MS Word. The software Adobe shipped was, in fact, something else.

Re: New information extracted from Snowden PDFs through metadata version analysis

#128

Post by mlmonkey »

nacozarina wrote: post #89
echelon wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are the journalists redacting the docs? That's incredibly puzzling. Is there something in here so damaging that they refuse to publish it? Did the government tell them they'd be in trouble if they published it? Are the journalists the only ones with access to the raw files?

Traditionally an editor would be obligated to review the material and redact info that could be harmful to others. The publisher has distinct liability independent of govt opinion.

> and redact info that could be harmful to others.

of course, these concerns are only applicable when these "others" are Americans and the American institutions.

Everybody else can just fend for themselves.

Whats good for the goose, should be good for the gander. If American journalists feel like there is no problem with disclosing secrets of, say, Maduro, then they should not be protecting people like Trump (just as an example).

Re: New information extracted from Snowden PDFs through metadata version analysis

#129

Post by [deleted] »

soared wrote: post #42
alhirzel wrote: post #3

There needs to be better tooling for inspecting PDF documents. Right now, my needs are met by using `qpdf` to export QDF [1], but it is just begging for a GUI to wrap around it... [1] https://qpdf.readthedocs.io/en/stable/qdf.html

In what contest do you use that tool? Looks like that page is primarily about editing pdfs using that format rather than inspecting. Very tempting to fool around with the ideas especially after the Epstein pdf debacle.

[deleted]
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