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This is a great reminder to follow the advice of a previous article here about the blurring of sensitive data. 1) If you care about the data, don't blur. Black
by abstractbeliefs 9y ago
This is a great reminder to follow the advice of a previous article here about the blurring of sensitive data.
1) If you care about the data, don't blur. Black it out, entirely.
2) If you don't want to black it out for aesthetic reasons, then you don't care enough about the data being private.
3) Black out every pixel, every time.
- SassanoM 9y ago+1
- wavefunction 9y agoDepending on your image editor, be sure to collapse PNG layers between the black bars and underlying image as well.
- JetSpiegel 9y agoTake a picture of the screen or a screenshot if you are truly paranoid.
- wlesieutre 9y agoPixelation is better than blurring but also not sufficient unless you use huge blocks. If it's an aesthetic thing, someone could make a tool that looks like it's blurring, but actually puts in fake data and then blurs that. But anyone who knows or cares enough to go download a purpose-made tool for censoring images probably just opened it in Paint and drew a black rectangle.
- 13of40 9y ago> If it's an aesthetic thing, someone could make a tool that looks like it's blurring The classy thing to do would be to replace it with a real QR code that spells out "remember to drink your ovaltine" but is damaged enough you need about a million brute force attempts to decode it.
- ateesdalejr 9y agoYes please... I need to go make that now.
- yeukhon 9y agoCrop it and replace the hole with a black-filled box. I find that a better option and much easier to accomplish.
- Sir_Cmpwn 9y agoThe key is just to overwrite the pixels. Black box is the easiest. Could be any other color box if you want, or a picture of your dog, etc
- walrus01 9y agountil you run into a government agency that thinks drawing a black box over something in a PDF is acceptable redaction, where the PDF is exported/published to the public in its full vector/metadata markup format, not a raster image... hilarious when you can just highlight and copy/paste to get whatever text is hidden. Have seen it several times. be careful asking non technical employees, sans training, to "just draw a black box over it", is what I'm saying.
- tedunangst 9y agoApocryphally some places have a policy that all redacted documents must be printed then rescanned before release.
- walrus01 9y agobecause fuck you, trees! right?
- simcop2387 9y agoIt's the simplest method to wipe out any metadata from the original document
- zaroth 9y agoReality Winner missed that day at NSA training!
- cesis 9y agoShe did print it and probably was caught because of that http://mashable.com/2017/06/06/printer-dots-nsa-leak.amp http://mashable.com/2017/06/06/printer-dots-nsa-leak.amp
- Geee 9y agoJPEG also stores the thumbnail separately in the EXIF data. This might not be updated when the image is edited and can reveal the original data.
- askvictor 9y agoTIFF too; possibly PDF, and no doubt other formats as well
- TazeTSchnitzel 9y agoIt's not even in the EXIF data, it's part of JFIF.
- schoen 9y agoA good example of this (maybe it was the subject of the previous already that you mention): https://petsymposium.org/2016/files/papers/On_the_(In)effectiveness_of_Mosaicing_and_Blurring_as_Tools_for_Document_Redaction.pdf https://petsymposium.org/2016/files/papers/On_the_(In)effect...
- akira2501 9y agoWhich reminds me of the disturbing case of Chritopher Paul Neil. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Paul_Neil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Paul_Neil
- gregsadetsky 9y agoGreat paper. It reminded me of seeing this recently, which was a bit surprising: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DM2-8SrX4AAqc4o.jpg:large https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DM2-8SrX4AAqc4o.jpg:large Context: http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/dillon-baldridge-trump-check_us_59ee8e2ee4b03535fa937fce http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/dillon-baldridge-trump-ch... Actually, the post above has a video where no blurring at all occurs...!
- nathancahill 9y agoI love this 2008 underhanded C contest along that same vein: http://www.underhanded-c.org/_page_id_17.html http://www.underhanded-c.org/_page_id_17.html
- andai 9y ago> Accidentally appending the original data to the image file.
- eradicatethots 9y agoOr you could just blur fake data in its place lol
- loup-vaillant 9y agoAn alternative to black out is to interpolate the pixels at the borders of the "blacked out" box. I've seen it done to suppress logos on images, in many cases it's barely intrusive. Applied to that QR-code, the currently blurred out part would be entirely white —because the original QR-code was surrounded by a white background. That should take care of many aesthetic concerns, without using a single bit of secret information for the final rendering.