15 ms·

Manafort Left an Incriminating Paper Trail Converting PDFs to Word

334 points by ronwen 9y ago

makecheck 9y ago
The complexity of many file formats is staggering and I try (usually with no success) to convince people to rely only on simpler formats that can be audited easily. Another example: I seem to recall a case awhile back where Word change-tracking contained sensitive information even though “the document” didn’t seem to. Sadly it used to be easy to rely on plain text implicitly but then we made Unicode so complicated that you have to be careful there too. Fingerprinting through zero-width sequences, etc. is essentially unnoticeable if you do not actively look for it.
- cpeterso 9y ago
  Word docs used to contain a UUID of the variety that included the MAC address of the machine that created, allow a doc to be traced back to the machine on which it was created. http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1999-04-12/entertainment/9904120227_1_melissa-richard-smith-microsoft-word http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1999-04-12/entertainment/99...
- stevenwoo 9y ago
  They caught the BTK killer because law enforcement told him he would be anonymous if he simply sent them a word doc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Rader https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Rader
simias 9y ago
I scoffed a bit at this part: >Try it in Adobe Acrobat (via the “Save as Other” command under “File” on a Mac) and you’ll quickly be redirected to Adobe’s website and presented with a handful of subscription packages that will allow you to transform your documents. [...] Indeed, it’s probably a little safer, all things considered. If I was doing shady stuff the last thing I'd want to do is send my incriminating documents to some 3rd party service. That being said I would also probably not send them over the clear in emails either. It's pretty insane how cavalier people are with email security (or lack thereof). I can't imagine that they would be so lenient if they were sending each other the files over regular mail. I think most people simply don't realize how thoroughly unsecure stock email is, you're basically lending an open postcard over the internet and you can be sure that a bunch of copies are made along the way. It's pretty much the worst way to share sensitive documents online short of posting them on facebook.
- jmull 9y ago
  It's actually much worse than sending incriminating documents through the mail, even printed brazenly on a postcard. To capture incriminating physical mail, the authorities have to already be monitoring you at the time you send the documents. With email they are typically able to go back and capture emails from days, weeks, and years prior.
  - sangnoir 9y ago
    > It's actually much worse than sending incriminating documents through the mail, even printed brazenly on a postcard. I know I'm nitpickig, but the USPS photographs of all pieces of mail and digitizes it. This information is considered metadata and is not protected against unwarranted searches, so postcards are much worse (for privacy), because even the small-town PD can get access to them without having to look for an "IT guy" to help. Email requires assistance from a TLA agency (or a search warrant served to the mail provider).
    - macintux 9y ago
      > the USPS photographs of all pieces of mail and digitizes it Thanks, I had no idea. While doing some genealogy recently I found that a distant ancestor had unclaimed mail in the post office shortly before he died. I found it vaguely amusing to envision walking in and asking for it now, 125 years later; I guess some distant descendant of mine might be able to ask for a photo of mail I'd sent or received.
socalnate1 9y ago
This is sort of an aside to the article; but it boggles my mind how many people in the business world view PDF's as secure, unalterable documents.
- ajross 9y ago
  No, Manafort knew what he was doing here, and was doing it for technically sound (albeit legally fraudulent) reasons: Word documents, unlike PDFs[1], store editting history. Manafort knew this, and wanted to evade that tracking. Where he fell down was in the actual conversion step, and in failing to realize that his email to Gates about the conversion were themselves a history of the edit. But his technical instincts were sound. If all Mueller had was that final PDF, he wouldn't have been able to detect the fraud (absent some other info, that is). [1] Obviously "PDF" is a histoically complicated format and some versions have features that might allow tracking. But the PDF/A documents emitted by typical "export" tools are stateless representations of printed documents, AFAIK.
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    Exactly. Conversion to PDF 'flattens' the document.
    - scblock 9y ago
      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.
      - enraged_camel 9y ago
        >>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.
Bucephalus355 9y ago
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 need 800-171 but we thought the 800-53 standard would make us a better organization. So many things I didn’t think of. Do you have a micro-cut shredder first of all? Those Enron-esque cross-cut shredders don’t cut it anymore with open source machine learning that can easily reassemble those documents. Also, do you have an access code for your printer so the document only prints when he/she is up there, and doesn’t get left throughout the day in the tray for prying eyes? Also are your servers currently sitting in inventory up high on the shelves in case water gets into the building? So many things... AmazonBasics 12-Sheet High-Security Micro-Cut Paper, CD, and Credit Card Shredder with Pullout Basket https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00D7H8XB6/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_zCfKAb1E3WBY5 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00D7H8XB6/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_zCfK...
- delish 9y ago
  > 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?
  - burningion 9y ago
    If not, this would make a great blog post idea.
  - matt4077 9y ago
    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.
    - 9y ago
lisper 9y ago
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?
- logfromblammo 9y ago
  To be fair, a lot of crimes essentially boil down to doing one monumentally stupid thing. So if you don't do the stupid thing, you aren't criminal.
- mattnewton 9y ago
  I guess hoping that someone who works for them does something monumentally stupid just once and can be flipped.
- lovefromatx 9y ago
  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.
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    Buffet's quote applies to non-criminals as well.
    - selectodude 9y ago
      yes, that was the original point that was being made by Buffett.
    - logfromblammo 9y ago
      One might also argue that if you notice the cop following you and continue driving another 490 miles, you will deserve that ticket. And maybe an award for fuel economy.
freehunter 9y ago
There 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 at most workplaces, and not everyone uses it. It also has size restrictions. USB is the most reliable, but then you get into the whole "it's NTFS formatted which doesn't work on my Linux machine" or it's HFS and I need to use it on Windows" nonsense, plus sending it longer distances takes days through the mail. But converting documents... guys it's just electricity running through fancy sand. It shouldn't be that hard. I work on software where I'm often connected to a jump server without Office installed on it, and the software expects me to open a spreadsheet for troubleshooting. I was doing some audio recording recently and the hoops I had to jump through to save it as MP3 weren't insurmountable, but still pretty annoying. And don't get me started on the Office 2003 spreadsheet that makes me boot up my Windows XP VM to open because the macros won't work on Office 2017. Or when I need to use Visio but there's no Mac version so I have to open my VM too. And the web just makes it worse... no more software incompatibilities because when software isn't supported anymore, we just shut the servers down and everything is gone forever.
- mtgx 9y ago
  For sending files, Firefox Send is pretty cool and straightforward. The files are sent P2P and are E2E encrypted. I'm not sure why Mozilla hasn't added a bookmark for it in Firefox yet. https://send.firefox.com/ https://send.firefox.com/
  - gruez 9y ago
    >The files are sent P2P afaik they're uploaded to s3, not sent p2p.
    - weaksauce 9y ago
      Correct. Though they are client side encrypted and the key is never sent anywhere.
trs80 9y ago
Maybe Gates had the conversion program installed and Manafort did not?
meaydinli 9y ago
All PDF to Word convertors I know are online services. Does that mean these people left copies of their documents on some servers? Those servers could also have timestamped logs of these people's access. If they were so careless with their own documents, if they altered more important ones, does that mean that there are now important documents stored somewhere in a random online pdf-word convertor?
- jonbarker 9y ago
  You can actually convert pdf to word in word, it's pretty cool!
  - fhrow4484 9y ago
    right, do people still use online tools these days? https://support.office.com/en-us/article/edit-pdf-content-in-word-b2d1d729-6b79-499a-bcdb-233379c2f63a https://support.office.com/en-us/article/edit-pdf-content-in...
retSava 9y ago
Semi-related tip: I despise protected pdfs with a passion. Especially when you download a datasheet and you can't add annotations or highlights to it. So, how to remove this protection? One way is to print to postscript and convert back to pdf, but then you can't copy text from it. Here's how (on windows): download qpdf (http://qpdf.sourceforge.net/ http://qpdf.sourceforge.net/) and run qpdf.exe -decrypt encrypted.pdf woho.pdf I made a small batchfile since I never remembered that syntax, # usage: # decrypt.sh mypdf.pdf # the decrypted file will be named mypdf.pdf, while the old encrypted is now mypdf.pdf-encrypted.pdf # echo pdf to de-secure: $1 read -n 1 -s -p "Press any key to continue" mv "$1" "$1"-encrypted.pdf qpdf.exe -decrypt "$1-encrypted.pdf" "$1" echo encrypted file is now named: $1-encrypted.pdf echo decrypted file is: $1
- astockwell 9y ago
  Put that in AWS Lambda and charge $1 each. Boom, Saas-retirement-fund.
  - untog 9y ago
    $1 is going to struggle to beat free: https://online2pdf.com/remove-pdf-restrictions https://online2pdf.com/remove-pdf-restrictions
    - diggan 9y ago
      Just make the UX really great. And be sure to have a really complicated-but-looking-nice UI for downgrading, and people will blog about it.
    - jermaustin1 9y ago
      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.
      - 9y ago
not_that_noob 9y ago
I don't think it was the conversion that was the issue, the gleeful schadenfreude of the article notwithstanding. Mueller is armed with subpoenas after all. This makes it easier for Mueller at best.
bandrami 9y ago
Another life ruined by not knowing LaTeX
- matt4077 9y ago
  ...and other criminal activity.
foobaw 9y ago
I'm sure they asked their "IT" staff to do the work for them. I wonder how they felt about doing these things
- stevenwoo 9y ago
  IT staff regularly have to lock people out of accounts/computers remotely after workers are fired or monitor everyone's internet access so they either get used to just doing what is told or don't work.
ordinaryperson 9y ago
What, the spending at $25,000 at Duane Reade (NYC-area drugstore) wasn't a dead giveaway of money laundering? https://www.buzzfeed.com/jasonleopold/manafort-under-scrutiny-for-40-million-in-suspicious?utm_term=.jf740k8e9#.iuxxOAPWQ https://www.buzzfeed.com/jasonleopold/manafort-under-scrutin... (bottom) The entire inventory of the store is barely worth 25K, I assume he must have been loading up on gift cards a la Mexican drug lords (http://am.blogs.cnn.com/2009/06/10/drug-lords-using-gift-cards-to-smuggle-money/ http://am.blogs.cnn.com/2009/06/10/drug-lords-using-gift-car...).
- trendia 9y ago
  Or he had some really expensive meds and bad insurance. That's pretty unlikely though.
  - nasredin 9y ago
    Bingo! $21,300 for his meds. The remaining ~4,000 maybe just fell out of his wallet. https://nytimes.com/2018/02/23/health/valeant-drug-price-syprine.html https://nytimes.com/2018/02/23/health/valeant-drug-price-syp...
duxup 9y ago
You can't make this stuff up, but someone will certainly claim it is made up.
staunch 9y ago
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.
- Strom 9y ago
  > 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-word-b2d1d729-6b79-499a-bcdb-233379c2f63a https://support.office.com/en-us/article/edit-pdf-content-in... [2] https://support.office.com/en-us/article/save-or-convert-to-pdf-or-xps-d85416c5-7d77-4fd6-a216-6f4bf7c7c110 https://support.office.com/en-us/article/save-or-convert-to-...
  - staunch 9y ago
    But the default does not protect users. Putting the onus on users to protect themselves is the problem.
  - NautilusWave 9y ago
    You can also right click a pdf > Open with > Word.
- John_KZ 9y ago
  Actually that's one example where lack of privacy accidentally leads to a good outcome for society. Also he was not failed by a piece of software. They recovered the document from his email. How would his email strip the document of identifying information?
coliveira 9y ago
The real lesson is: if you're going to do anything ilegal, don't discuss what you're doing on email. People so often forget that email is an official paper trail of everything you do.
- neaden 9y ago
  As Olivia Nuzzi put it: "Dance Like No One is Watching; Email Like It May One Day Be Read Aloud in a Deposition"
btown 9y ago
As an aside, Adobe Acrobat Pro's PDF-to-PPTX is a godsend if you're ever given a slide deck in PDF form that you need to update/remake to certain aesthetic standards (i.e. a partner/coworker sends you something you need to update to your company's standard formatting, for distribution to management, potential investors, etc.). Images become editable, backgrounds become editable shapes, and text boxes and even tables are preserved with remarkable accuracy. Extremely useful if you ever find yourself in such a situation.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
Nokinside 9y ago
When I was involved with a contract negotiation, they emailed me a pdf offer with addresses, names and important numbers retracted with black and asked if these terms are OK with me and we can talk about the numbers. I noticed that when I select a region of text with a mouse, the retracted' black text becomes white text over black background. It revealed name of our competitor, addressees and numbers in their offer, the whole retraction was just a typographic trick. When in doubt, print -> scan -> convert to pdf.
- eyepulp 9y ago
  I think you meant "redacted" vs "retracted". But yeah, there are a lot of stories out there of people assuming a black bar over black text is high security.
  - refurb 9y ago
    There was a document released by the State Dept at one point where the redactions were just black box over the text. You could just select, copy and paste to see it. I compared documents and maybe not surprisingly, they seemed relatively minor points.
IshKebab 9y ago
It is actually really difficult to convert a PDF to Word. Clearly the author has never tried.
fencepost 9y ago
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 were he interested, but his daily life had very little intersection with this kind of thing until he spiraled into a hole of debt, at which point "do I trust this person" ranked a lot higher than "how are this person's technical skills?"
- mbell 9y ago
  Do you really need a technical background or some sort of college training to find the File > Save As > PDF option?
  - braderhart 9y ago
    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.
    - s73v3r_ 9y ago
      You don't buy that many people are quite bad with computers?
      - braderhart 9y ago
        When it is your job to hide your financial activities, then no not really.
        s73v3r_ 9y ago
        You've never worked tech support, have you?
        9y ago
busterarm 9y ago
Stringer Bell said it best: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBdGOrcUEg8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBdGOrcUEg8
braderhart 9y ago
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.
mullingitover 9y ago
The whole point of a PDF is that it's an artifact that isn't meant to be edited. You edit the source document that the PDF was generated from, then generate a new PDF from that. In this case, Manafort specifically couldn't do that because he was up to something shady. If people were using the electronic signatures properly, his modifications would've stuck out like a sore thumb.
_Codemonkeyism 9y ago
Hilarious those journalists "I attempted to transform my Word draft of this blog post into a PDF. I confess that I did fumble a bit at first (it’s been a while), but I eventually managed to get the job done. According to my stopwatch, the full ordeal took me 42 seconds." When the real problem ws turning a PDF into Word.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- mi100hael 9y ago
  Not necessarily. There might not have been an obvious criminal action if Manafort just had someone else convert an existing P&L disclosure from PDF to Word. The real problem was asking someone to convert his fraudulent Word doc to PDF.
- ScottBurson 9y ago
  And since PDF is encapsulated PostScript, and PostScript is a Turing-complete language, this problem is actually uncomputable in general! I guess it can be done well enough in practice by pattern-matching — if the document came from Word originally, it's probably possible to reverse the process — but that is one converter I would certainly not want to have to write!
zelon88 9y ago
Too bad Manafort and Gates didn't have an account on my unlimited Cloud Platform. They could've created an account, uploaded the .pdf, converted it to .doc, edited it online, and then converted it back to .pdf without being tracked. The only evidence would have been user-specific log files showing which user changed which filenames and when, but all those content changes would have been lost provided they delete the originals. Hindsight is always 20/20 I guess.
Cw67NTN8F 9y ago
FBI has virtually unlimited resources and they really want this guy. So, he only made it easier, no doubt they would have caught that even without the paper trail. FBI had access to his corp returns and to his loan application. Everything he has done is under the microscope and unless he can hand Trump on a silver plate, he's toast. He's almost 70 years old and you're talking about 20 years sentences. When you deal with Russians crooks and people in those circles, you tend to lower your guard. You think you will not get caught "because in Ukraine they had money in suitcases," or through a gazillion shell companies. The funny thing is that he might have just gotten away, if he wasn't involved in the Trump campaign. Call it greed or money mismanagement, but knowing when to quit may mean life or death (kinda)
- threeseed 9y ago
  The other factor at play is presidential pardons. Manafort pleading innocent could be a strategy to appear as the victim of the "deep state".
  - eCa 9y ago
    A minor point, but accepting a pardon carries a confession of guilt.
  - Cw67NTN8F 9y ago
    Not a lawyer, but IMO someone has to go to jail. All this money spent, the media and Mueller isn't going to end his career shooting blanks. You can plead however you want to, but if the evidence is crystal clear, you're toast. Even if Trump pardons him, NY would step in http://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/333370-ny-ag-investigating-manaforts-real-estate-deals-report http://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/333370-ny-ag-investi... , apparently a lot of the laundering took place in NY (get paid in foreign bank from foreign sources; don't declare to IRS+State; pay suppliers and mortgages from that account directly, without declaring it. Millions and millions of it, not chump change) Decisions, decisions. Give up Trump (if he is hiding something) and kinda go to witness protection because they'll get sued for decades or life in jail.
thrusong 9y ago
Even my mother who actually couldn't find the "any" key to continue knows how to do this...
MaggieL 9y ago
Kinda like Hillary having Huma print classified info from Weiner's laptop.
jorblumesea 9y ago
If you have a track record on the span of decades of doing shady stuff, why would you associate yourself with a lightning rod of controversy? Why join any political campaign? Manafort is not a smart man.
- chestervonwinch 9y ago
  Money and a desire to get back to positions of influence, most likely. See this article for a lot of detail: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/03/paul-manafort-american-hustler/550925/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/03/paul-ma...
  - nasredin 9y ago
    People need to read this if it's the one thing they read about this guy.
Animats 9y ago
Getting a clean conversion from PDF to some editable format is hard, at least without Microsoft tools. I've been trying to convert a PDF manual to something I can edit using Ubuntu. LibreOffice produces a Draw document where the text is too big for its text boxes. Abiword extracts the text and loses the images and most of the formatting. An online service at least produced a usable document.
cjcampbell 9y ago
Thinking of launching a cyber-essentials course for aspiring white collar criminals. What are the easiest online training platforms. j/k
puppetmaster40 9y ago
OT: 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?
- threeseed 9y ago
  Mueller's remit is to investigate any crimes related to the campaign and election. Trump/Russia collusion is just one of many including money laundering and obstruction of justice. Manafort was campaign chairman and is alleged to have convinced Trump to change positions on Ukraine as a a result of outside funds. Hence investigating money laundering is directly relevant to Mueller's remit.
  - puppetmaster40 9y ago
    Where is what the internets say: according to WaPo ( http://archive.is/AUN7q http://archive.is/AUN7q ) Manafort was operating for 10 years - each of the 8 years of Obama. Where can I find the source for: 'Manafort was campaign chairman and is alleged to have convinced Trump to change positions'. Also, what is your feeling on amount and frequency Dems were actually paid directly by foreign govs?
Balgair 9y ago
Even a guy with millions won't buy Acrobat.
merb 9y ago
well with adobe pro he would not have these problems.

334 points by ronwen 9y ago

The complexity of many file formats is staggering and I try (usually with no success) to convince people to rely only on simpler formats that can be audited easily. Another example: I seem to recall a case awhile back where Word change-tracking contained sensitive information even though “the document” didn’t seem to. Sadly it used to be easy to rely on plain text implicitly but then we made Unicode so complicated that you have to be careful there too. Fingerprinting through zero-width sequences, etc. is essentially unnoticeable if you do not actively look for it.

cpeterso 9y ago
Word docs used to contain a UUID of the variety that included the MAC address of the machine that created, allow a doc to be traced back to the machine on which it was created. http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1999-04-12/entertainment/9904120227_1_melissa-richard-smith-microsoft-word http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1999-04-12/entertainment/99...
stevenwoo 9y ago
They caught the BTK killer because law enforcement told him he would be anonymous if he simply sent them a word doc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Rader https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Rader

simias 9y ago

I scoffed a bit at this part: >Try it in Adobe Acrobat (via the “Save as Other” command under “File” on a Mac) and you’ll quickly be redirected to Adobe’s website and presented with a handful of subscription packages that will allow you to transform your documents. [...] Indeed, it’s probably a little safer, all things considered. If I was doing shady stuff the last thing I'd want to do is send my incriminating documents to some 3rd party service. That being said I would also probably not send them over the clear in emails either. It's pretty insane how cavalier people are with email security (or lack thereof). I can't imagine that they would be so lenient if they were sending each other the files over regular mail. I think most people simply don't realize how thoroughly unsecure stock email is, you're basically lending an open postcard over the internet and you can be sure that a bunch of copies are made along the way. It's pretty much the worst way to share sensitive documents online short of posting them on facebook.

jmull 9y ago
It's actually much worse than sending incriminating documents through the mail, even printed brazenly on a postcard. To capture incriminating physical mail, the authorities have to already be monitoring you at the time you send the documents. With email they are typically able to go back and capture emails from days, weeks, and years prior.
- sangnoir 9y ago
  > It's actually much worse than sending incriminating documents through the mail, even printed brazenly on a postcard. I know I'm nitpickig, but the USPS photographs of all pieces of mail and digitizes it. This information is considered metadata and is not protected against unwarranted searches, so postcards are much worse (for privacy), because even the small-town PD can get access to them without having to look for an "IT guy" to help. Email requires assistance from a TLA agency (or a search warrant served to the mail provider).
  - macintux 9y ago
    > the USPS photographs of all pieces of mail and digitizes it Thanks, I had no idea. While doing some genealogy recently I found that a distant ancestor had unclaimed mail in the post office shortly before he died. I found it vaguely amusing to envision walking in and asking for it now, 125 years later; I guess some distant descendant of mine might be able to ask for a photo of mail I'd sent or received.

socalnate1 9y ago

This is sort of an aside to the article; but it boggles my mind how many people in the business world view PDF's as secure, unalterable documents.

ajross 9y ago
No, Manafort knew what he was doing here, and was doing it for technically sound (albeit legally fraudulent) reasons: Word documents, unlike PDFs[1], store editting history. Manafort knew this, and wanted to evade that tracking. Where he fell down was in the actual conversion step, and in failing to realize that his email to Gates about the conversion were themselves a history of the edit. But his technical instincts were sound. If all Mueller had was that final PDF, he wouldn't have been able to detect the fraud (absent some other info, that is). [1] Obviously "PDF" is a histoically complicated format and some versions have features that might allow tracking. But the PDF/A documents emitted by typical "export" tools are stateless representations of printed documents, AFAIK.
- jacquesm 9y ago
  Exactly. Conversion to PDF 'flattens' the document.
  - scblock 9y ago
    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.
    - enraged_camel 9y ago
      >>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.

Bucephalus355 9y ago

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 need 800-171 but we thought the 800-53 standard would make us a better organization. So many things I didn’t think of. Do you have a micro-cut shredder first of all? Those Enron-esque cross-cut shredders don’t cut it anymore with open source machine learning that can easily reassemble those documents. Also, do you have an access code for your printer so the document only prints when he/she is up there, and doesn’t get left throughout the day in the tray for prying eyes? Also are your servers currently sitting in inventory up high on the shelves in case water gets into the building? So many things... AmazonBasics 12-Sheet High-Security Micro-Cut Paper, CD, and Credit Card Shredder with Pullout Basket https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00D7H8XB6/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_zCfKAb1E3WBY5 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00D7H8XB6/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_zCfK...

delish 9y ago
> 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?
- burningion 9y ago
  If not, this would make a great blog post idea.
- matt4077 9y ago
  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.
  - 9y ago

lisper 9y ago

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?

logfromblammo 9y ago
To be fair, a lot of crimes essentially boil down to doing one monumentally stupid thing. So if you don't do the stupid thing, you aren't criminal.
mattnewton 9y ago
I guess hoping that someone who works for them does something monumentally stupid just once and can be flipped.
lovefromatx 9y ago
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.
- jacquesm 9y ago
  Buffet's quote applies to non-criminals as well.
  - selectodude 9y ago
    yes, that was the original point that was being made by Buffett.
  - logfromblammo 9y ago
    One might also argue that if you notice the cop following you and continue driving another 490 miles, you will deserve that ticket. And maybe an award for fuel economy.

freehunter 9y ago

There 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 at most workplaces, and not everyone uses it. It also has size restrictions. USB is the most reliable, but then you get into the whole "it's NTFS formatted which doesn't work on my Linux machine" or it's HFS and I need to use it on Windows" nonsense, plus sending it longer distances takes days through the mail. But converting documents... guys it's just electricity running through fancy sand. It shouldn't be that hard. I work on software where I'm often connected to a jump server without Office installed on it, and the software expects me to open a spreadsheet for troubleshooting. I was doing some audio recording recently and the hoops I had to jump through to save it as MP3 weren't insurmountable, but still pretty annoying. And don't get me started on the Office 2003 spreadsheet that makes me boot up my Windows XP VM to open because the macros won't work on Office 2017. Or when I need to use Visio but there's no Mac version so I have to open my VM too. And the web just makes it worse... no more software incompatibilities because when software isn't supported anymore, we just shut the servers down and everything is gone forever.

mtgx 9y ago
For sending files, Firefox Send is pretty cool and straightforward. The files are sent P2P and are E2E encrypted. I'm not sure why Mozilla hasn't added a bookmark for it in Firefox yet. https://send.firefox.com/ https://send.firefox.com/
- gruez 9y ago
  >The files are sent P2P afaik they're uploaded to s3, not sent p2p.
  - weaksauce 9y ago
    Correct. Though they are client side encrypted and the key is never sent anywhere.

trs80 9y ago

Maybe Gates had the conversion program installed and Manafort did not?

meaydinli 9y ago

All PDF to Word convertors I know are online services. Does that mean these people left copies of their documents on some servers? Those servers could also have timestamped logs of these people's access. If they were so careless with their own documents, if they altered more important ones, does that mean that there are now important documents stored somewhere in a random online pdf-word convertor?

jonbarker 9y ago
You can actually convert pdf to word in word, it's pretty cool!
- fhrow4484 9y ago
  right, do people still use online tools these days? https://support.office.com/en-us/article/edit-pdf-content-in-word-b2d1d729-6b79-499a-bcdb-233379c2f63a https://support.office.com/en-us/article/edit-pdf-content-in...

retSava 9y ago

Semi-related tip: I despise protected pdfs with a passion. Especially when you download a datasheet and you can't add annotations or highlights to it. So, how to remove this protection? One way is to print to postscript and convert back to pdf, but then you can't copy text from it. Here's how (on windows): download qpdf (http://qpdf.sourceforge.net/ http://qpdf.sourceforge.net/) and run qpdf.exe -decrypt encrypted.pdf woho.pdf I made a small batchfile since I never remembered that syntax, # usage: # decrypt.sh mypdf.pdf # the decrypted file will be named mypdf.pdf, while the old encrypted is now mypdf.pdf-encrypted.pdf # echo pdf to de-secure: $1 read -n 1 -s -p "Press any key to continue" mv "$1" "$1"-encrypted.pdf qpdf.exe -decrypt "$1-encrypted.pdf" "$1" echo encrypted file is now named: $1-encrypted.pdf echo decrypted file is: $1

astockwell 9y ago
Put that in AWS Lambda and charge $1 each. Boom, Saas-retirement-fund.
- untog 9y ago
  $1 is going to struggle to beat free: https://online2pdf.com/remove-pdf-restrictions https://online2pdf.com/remove-pdf-restrictions
  - diggan 9y ago
    Just make the UX really great. And be sure to have a really complicated-but-looking-nice UI for downgrading, and people will blog about it.
  - jermaustin1 9y ago
    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.
    - 9y ago

not_that_noob 9y ago

I don't think it was the conversion that was the issue, the gleeful schadenfreude of the article notwithstanding. Mueller is armed with subpoenas after all. This makes it easier for Mueller at best.

bandrami 9y ago

Another life ruined by not knowing LaTeX

matt4077 9y ago
...and other criminal activity.

foobaw 9y ago

I'm sure they asked their "IT" staff to do the work for them. I wonder how they felt about doing these things

stevenwoo 9y ago
IT staff regularly have to lock people out of accounts/computers remotely after workers are fired or monitor everyone's internet access so they either get used to just doing what is told or don't work.

ordinaryperson 9y ago

What, the spending at $25,000 at Duane Reade (NYC-area drugstore) wasn't a dead giveaway of money laundering? https://www.buzzfeed.com/jasonleopold/manafort-under-scrutiny-for-40-million-in-suspicious?utm_term=.jf740k8e9#.iuxxOAPWQ https://www.buzzfeed.com/jasonleopold/manafort-under-scrutin... (bottom) The entire inventory of the store is barely worth 25K, I assume he must have been loading up on gift cards a la Mexican drug lords (http://am.blogs.cnn.com/2009/06/10/drug-lords-using-gift-cards-to-smuggle-money/ http://am.blogs.cnn.com/2009/06/10/drug-lords-using-gift-car...).

trendia 9y ago
Or he had some really expensive meds and bad insurance. That's pretty unlikely though.
- nasredin 9y ago
  Bingo! $21,300 for his meds. The remaining ~4,000 maybe just fell out of his wallet. https://nytimes.com/2018/02/23/health/valeant-drug-price-syprine.html https://nytimes.com/2018/02/23/health/valeant-drug-price-syp...

duxup 9y ago

You can't make this stuff up, but someone will certainly claim it is made up.

staunch 9y ago

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.

Strom 9y ago
> 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-word-b2d1d729-6b79-499a-bcdb-233379c2f63a https://support.office.com/en-us/article/edit-pdf-content-in... [2] https://support.office.com/en-us/article/save-or-convert-to-pdf-or-xps-d85416c5-7d77-4fd6-a216-6f4bf7c7c110 https://support.office.com/en-us/article/save-or-convert-to-...
- staunch 9y ago
  But the default does not protect users. Putting the onus on users to protect themselves is the problem.
- NautilusWave 9y ago
  You can also right click a pdf > Open with > Word.
John_KZ 9y ago
Actually that's one example where lack of privacy accidentally leads to a good outcome for society. Also he was not failed by a piece of software. They recovered the document from his email. How would his email strip the document of identifying information?

coliveira 9y ago

The real lesson is: if you're going to do anything ilegal, don't discuss what you're doing on email. People so often forget that email is an official paper trail of everything you do.

neaden 9y ago
As Olivia Nuzzi put it: "Dance Like No One is Watching; Email Like It May One Day Be Read Aloud in a Deposition"

btown 9y ago

As an aside, Adobe Acrobat Pro's PDF-to-PPTX is a godsend if you're ever given a slide deck in PDF form that you need to update/remake to certain aesthetic standards (i.e. a partner/coworker sends you something you need to update to your company's standard formatting, for distribution to management, potential investors, etc.). Images become editable, backgrounds become editable shapes, and text boxes and even tables are preserved with remarkable accuracy. Extremely useful if you ever find yourself in such a situation.

deleted 9y ago
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Nokinside 9y ago

When I was involved with a contract negotiation, they emailed me a pdf offer with addresses, names and important numbers retracted with black and asked if these terms are OK with me and we can talk about the numbers. I noticed that when I select a region of text with a mouse, the retracted' black text becomes white text over black background. It revealed name of our competitor, addressees and numbers in their offer, the whole retraction was just a typographic trick. When in doubt, print -> scan -> convert to pdf.

eyepulp 9y ago
I think you meant "redacted" vs "retracted". But yeah, there are a lot of stories out there of people assuming a black bar over black text is high security.
- refurb 9y ago
  There was a document released by the State Dept at one point where the redactions were just black box over the text. You could just select, copy and paste to see it. I compared documents and maybe not surprisingly, they seemed relatively minor points.

IshKebab 9y ago

It is actually really difficult to convert a PDF to Word. Clearly the author has never tried.

fencepost 9y ago

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 were he interested, but his daily life had very little intersection with this kind of thing until he spiraled into a hole of debt, at which point "do I trust this person" ranked a lot higher than "how are this person's technical skills?"

mbell 9y ago
Do you really need a technical background or some sort of college training to find the File > Save As > PDF option?
- braderhart 9y ago
  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.
  - s73v3r_ 9y ago
    You don't buy that many people are quite bad with computers?
    - braderhart 9y ago
      When it is your job to hide your financial activities, then no not really.
      - s73v3r_ 9y ago
        You've never worked tech support, have you?
      - 9y ago

busterarm 9y ago

Stringer Bell said it best: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBdGOrcUEg8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBdGOrcUEg8

braderhart 9y ago

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.

mullingitover 9y ago

The whole point of a PDF is that it's an artifact that isn't meant to be edited. You edit the source document that the PDF was generated from, then generate a new PDF from that. In this case, Manafort specifically couldn't do that because he was up to something shady. If people were using the electronic signatures properly, his modifications would've stuck out like a sore thumb.

_Codemonkeyism 9y ago

Hilarious those journalists "I attempted to transform my Word draft of this blog post into a PDF. I confess that I did fumble a bit at first (it’s been a while), but I eventually managed to get the job done. According to my stopwatch, the full ordeal took me 42 seconds." When the real problem ws turning a PDF into Word.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
mi100hael 9y ago
Not necessarily. There might not have been an obvious criminal action if Manafort just had someone else convert an existing P&L disclosure from PDF to Word. The real problem was asking someone to convert his fraudulent Word doc to PDF.
ScottBurson 9y ago
And since PDF is encapsulated PostScript, and PostScript is a Turing-complete language, this problem is actually uncomputable in general! I guess it can be done well enough in practice by pattern-matching — if the document came from Word originally, it's probably possible to reverse the process — but that is one converter I would certainly not want to have to write!

zelon88 9y ago

Too bad Manafort and Gates didn't have an account on my unlimited Cloud Platform. They could've created an account, uploaded the .pdf, converted it to .doc, edited it online, and then converted it back to .pdf without being tracked. The only evidence would have been user-specific log files showing which user changed which filenames and when, but all those content changes would have been lost provided they delete the originals. Hindsight is always 20/20 I guess.

Cw67NTN8F 9y ago

FBI has virtually unlimited resources and they really want this guy. So, he only made it easier, no doubt they would have caught that even without the paper trail. FBI had access to his corp returns and to his loan application. Everything he has done is under the microscope and unless he can hand Trump on a silver plate, he's toast. He's almost 70 years old and you're talking about 20 years sentences. When you deal with Russians crooks and people in those circles, you tend to lower your guard. You think you will not get caught "because in Ukraine they had money in suitcases," or through a gazillion shell companies. The funny thing is that he might have just gotten away, if he wasn't involved in the Trump campaign. Call it greed or money mismanagement, but knowing when to quit may mean life or death (kinda)

threeseed 9y ago
The other factor at play is presidential pardons. Manafort pleading innocent could be a strategy to appear as the victim of the "deep state".
- eCa 9y ago
  A minor point, but accepting a pardon carries a confession of guilt.
- Cw67NTN8F 9y ago
  Not a lawyer, but IMO someone has to go to jail. All this money spent, the media and Mueller isn't going to end his career shooting blanks. You can plead however you want to, but if the evidence is crystal clear, you're toast. Even if Trump pardons him, NY would step in http://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/333370-ny-ag-investigating-manaforts-real-estate-deals-report http://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/333370-ny-ag-investi... , apparently a lot of the laundering took place in NY (get paid in foreign bank from foreign sources; don't declare to IRS+State; pay suppliers and mortgages from that account directly, without declaring it. Millions and millions of it, not chump change) Decisions, decisions. Give up Trump (if he is hiding something) and kinda go to witness protection because they'll get sued for decades or life in jail.

thrusong 9y ago

Even my mother who actually couldn't find the "any" key to continue knows how to do this...

MaggieL 9y ago

Kinda like Hillary having Huma print classified info from Weiner's laptop.

jorblumesea 9y ago

If you have a track record on the span of decades of doing shady stuff, why would you associate yourself with a lightning rod of controversy? Why join any political campaign? Manafort is not a smart man.

chestervonwinch 9y ago
Money and a desire to get back to positions of influence, most likely. See this article for a lot of detail: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/03/paul-manafort-american-hustler/550925/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/03/paul-ma...
- nasredin 9y ago
  People need to read this if it's the one thing they read about this guy.

Animats 9y ago

Getting a clean conversion from PDF to some editable format is hard, at least without Microsoft tools. I've been trying to convert a PDF manual to something I can edit using Ubuntu. LibreOffice produces a Draw document where the text is too big for its text boxes. Abiword extracts the text and loses the images and most of the formatting. An online service at least produced a usable document.

cjcampbell 9y ago

Thinking of launching a cyber-essentials course for aspiring white collar criminals. What are the easiest online training platforms. j/k

puppetmaster40 9y ago

OT: 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?

threeseed 9y ago
Mueller's remit is to investigate any crimes related to the campaign and election. Trump/Russia collusion is just one of many including money laundering and obstruction of justice. Manafort was campaign chairman and is alleged to have convinced Trump to change positions on Ukraine as a a result of outside funds. Hence investigating money laundering is directly relevant to Mueller's remit.
- puppetmaster40 9y ago
  Where is what the internets say: according to WaPo ( http://archive.is/AUN7q http://archive.is/AUN7q ) Manafort was operating for 10 years - each of the 8 years of Obama. Where can I find the source for: 'Manafort was campaign chairman and is alleged to have convinced Trump to change positions'. Also, what is your feeling on amount and frequency Dems were actually paid directly by foreign govs?

Balgair 9y ago

Even a guy with millions won't buy Acrobat.

merb 9y ago

well with adobe pro he would not have these problems.