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It sets a bad precedent to call things like this hacks. Firstly, calling this redaction implies that the data is missing, and calling what was done "unredactin
by Arch-TK 10mo ago
It sets a bad precedent to call things like this hacks.
Firstly, calling this redaction implies that the data is missing, and calling what was done "unredacting" is akin to saying someone "decrypted" a cryptographic hash function.
Nobody unredacted anything here, they merely discovered that it hadn't been redacted, and simply looked like it was redacted.
Calling this a hack places responsibility on the people who discovered the information, rather than on the people were put in charge of handling the redaction and screwed it up.
- e38383 10mo agoThank you, I came here just to verify that no "hack" was involved.
- stingraycharles 10mo agoI also like to think this was maybe done as a form of malicious compliance. Someone inside the agency was tasked with redacting this, and found a way to sneak the information through but still getting it passed by their supervisors, so that the information got out.
- GuB-42 10mo agoIt reminds me of the 2008 Underhanded C code contest. The subject was exactly this. https://www.underhanded-c.org/_page_id_17.html https://www.underhanded-c.org/_page_id_17.html And the winner's solution is incredibly simple and clever.
- sallveburrpi 10mo agoTo me this is the only explanation that makes sense. However wouldn’t they risk repercussions when this is inevitably found out? I assume they have records who redacted which documents
- stingraycharles 10mo agoYes they may get fired, but it will be difficult to prove intent and very easy to claim incompetence. So I don’t think there will be jail time if that’s what you’re referring to.
- seg_lol 10mo agoThe mal-redacted file actually points to a crime itself of redacting things it shouldn't have.
- fwip 10mo agoOr, if there is indeed an ongoing investigation on those two, it could be leaking that fact, right?
- seg_lol 10mo agoNot in this case, this is just a cover for the guilty because this shows that Epsteins Estate also works for Trump. The rot runs deep. There is no investigation, that is the point.
- DerArzt 10mo agoSome peopledo things acknowledging that there may be backlash for an action when they feel it's the right thing to do.
- stingraycharles 10mo agoSnowden being an extreme example, I feel really sorry for what happened to him but he really did the right thing.
- ErroneousBosh 10mo agoOut of a thousand people? Where they probably have an email from a PHB that says something like "put a black box over all references to <this list of things?"?
- rtkwe 10mo agoThis happens too regularly across both minor and major issues for me to think this is entirely redactors intentionally messing up. It's just a lot of people being pulled on to the job and not all of them are competent. Maybe some of it is intentional but not all of it I'm certain.
- mbesto 10mo ago> I assume they have records who redacted which documents (1) Considering it was a rush job (2) general ineptness of this administration and (3) the management wouldn't have defined the explicit job description ("completely black out, not use black highlighter"), the likeliness that there is any evidence that this was intentionally malicious is pretty low.
- afavour 10mo agoYou’re absolutely correct but I think your comment also highlights something important: we don’t have a good word to represent what it is Unfortunately “hack” became a catch all word long ago. Just look at “life hacks”.
- kungito 10mo agoThey failed to redact data. That's it. People just read the files afterwards, only formatting was wierd.
- lo_zamoyski 10mo agoThey're likely viewing the electronic documents by analogy to photocopies with blacked out sections where there is nothing to distinguish the text from the redacting marks and nothing you can project out. They don't know the structure of the file format and how information in it is encoded or rendered, or even that there is a distinction between encoding and rendering. (A better analogy might be the original physical document with redaction marks. If the text is printed using a laser printer or a type writer, and the marker used for redaction uses some other kind of ink - let's say one that doesn't dissolve the text's ink or toner in any way - then you can in principle distinguish between the two and thus recover visibility of the text.)
- calgoo 10mo agoTo complicated, the people doing the redacting pasted digital stickers ontop of the text, people are just removing the stickers.
- mjevans 10mo agoFile formats are complicated. The only reliable way to redact is to reduce that complication to one which humans can manage. This is even true for software that is written by humans. Plain text and flat images are my preferred formats for things which must be redacted. Images require a slight bit of special care, as the example in the underhanded C contest highlights, but it's possible to enforce visible redaction and transcription steps that destroy hidden information.
- pwg 10mo agoThe journalist writing the story has the same level of technical knowledge about how to "redact" properly in the digital realm as the individuals doing the redaction. To the journalist, with zero knowledge of the technical aspects, viewing the "redacted" document, it appears to be "redacted", so when someone "unredacts" it, the action of revealing the otherwise hidden material appears to be "magical" to them (in the vein of the Arthur C Clarke quote of: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"). To the journalist, it looks like "hackers at work" because the result looks like magic. Therefore their editor attaching "hacks" to the title for additional clickbait as well. To us technical people, who understand the concept of layers in digital editing, it is no big deal at all (and is not surprising that some percentage of the PDF's have been processed this way).
- seba_dos1 10mo agoIt's not a hard technical concept to grasp that placing a stick-it onto some thing doesn't make the thing behind it disappear.
- pwg 10mo agoNo, it is not. But given the abysmal lack of technical knowledge of the "typical computer user" they don't see the redacted PDF's as "having black stick-it notes stuck on top of the text". They see the PDF as having had a "black marker pen" applied that has obliterated the text from view. When someone then shows them how to copy/paste out the original text, because the PDF was simply black stick-it notes above the text, it appears to them as if that someone is a magical wizard of infinite intelligence.
- sallveburrpi 10mo agoI would consider it gross negligence on the journalists part to not know the technical details here. It’s really not that hard; as someone else on this thread pointed out even my grandma knows this… You can find out the technical details in one quick search. How someone like this gets a paying job as a journalist is beyond me.
- blitzar 10mo agoFurthermore, this happens so often, so frequently, in so many high profile cases that even my 80 year old mother knows this "secret hack to unredact a pdf". If you are CIA / FBI / Court / Lawyer or professional full time redactor of documents you should know that the highlighter doesn't delete the text underneath it.
- relic 10mo agoI think the more likely cause was precisely that it wasn't a technical professional/lawyer/writer doing the redacting, but someone in the administration or close to it that has no idea how to redact information correctly.
- inopinatus 10mo agoHere on the hacking news website we sure are persnickety about the difference.
- GuB-42 10mo agoThe funny part is that people with screen readers may have gone through the redaction without realizing it.
- FeteCommuniste 10mo agoThat is pretty funny. All it takes to be a hacker is to use assistive software.
- TZubiri 10mo agoIt also removes blame from the departments that redacted, it's not like they messed up big time, no, some resourceful brainiac hackers did things that were not allowed to undo the redaction process that was put in place to protect victims.
- braiamp 10mo agoConsidering that only the title of the article says "hacks", I would say this is the editor decision.
- jasonlotito 10mo agoI find it funny to use a hack to argue about the misuse of words and definitions. Regardless, redaction does not imply that data is missing. The words were censored or obscured. That's it. Simply looking at the documents proves that. Interacting with them showed how easy they were to uncensor, but the simplicity of the method doesn't change facts. By all means, complain about definitions and words, but get it right.
- lloydatkinson 10mo agoCalling everything a hack is the only way to make tech illiterate boomers and zoomers alike understand anything.
- BoredPositron 10mo agoI think we should all come to terms with it that "hack" doesn't mean anything anymore so we don't have to fight over words that were never clearly defined anyways. On most days this site here should be called "frontendnews".
- jrochkind1 10mo agoIt does seem to raise the risk that someone would be prosecuted for DMCA violation if we refer to it that way.
- dspillett 10mo agoThat is a very low bar. If methane's chemical representation was present in a DVD key, you could be done for DMCA violation every time you fart.
- figassis 10mo agoI agree, but this would mean that almost anything can’t be called hacking, bc it usually relies on vulnerabilities and implementation defects. If something is poorly encrypted and you retrieve data, you didn’t hack because it wasn’t encrypted to begin with. That can’t be the standard.
- Arch-TK 10mo agoThere is a line, it is fuzzy, but if all you did was find something which was there for anyone to find, I would place that firmly on the not hacking side. If it was rot 13 I would put that marginally closer to hacking than this.
- clhodapp 10mo agoIt's true, but aren't most hacks like this? If you understand the system flaw, the hack is obvious.
- dspillett 10mo ago> It sets a bad precedent to call things like this hacks. That ship sailed a long time ago. The “phone hacking scandal” in ~2010¹ was mostly calling answering services that didn't have pins or other authorisation checks set. These days any old trick gets called a hack, heck tying your shoelaces might get called a miraculous footwear securing hack. -------- [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_International_phone_hacking_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_International_phone_hacki...
- badgersnake 10mo agoTalk about missing the point. It’s almost like you’re trying to deflect the audience.
- dang 10mo agoOk, we've un-with-hacksed the title above.