Our content licensing agreement with AAP stipulates that the material must be taken down 30 days from the date of publication. Therefore this particular story, having exceeded that time frame, has expired. We apologise for any inconvenience.
Our content licensing agreement with AAP stipulates that the material must be taken down 30 days from the date of publication. Therefore this particular story, having exceeded that time frame, has expired. We apologise for any inconvenience.
Malcolm Turnbull's ghost twitterer
At the Sydney Media140 conference several weeks ago, Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull admitted he doesn't pe… Watch it now
Google Chrome OS demonstration
Vice President of Product Marketing Sundar Pichai gives a virtual tour of Google's new operating system, Chrom… Watch it now
Surf the Net like it's 1991 with Gopher
The old Gopher protocol is not dead. In fact, it even has Twitter! Here's how to access it.… Watch it now
Having problems with complex data center? Simplify your data center now.
Is wholesale-only backhaul just a pipedream?
Get extensions going in Firefox, redux
How reliable is IP telephony?
What makes you click?
Tell us for a chance to win a $1,000 GAME gift voucher.
Click here for more.
Win an iPhone 3GS!
Sign up as a ZDNet Australia member during November and you'll go in a draw to win an iPhone 3GS!
Click here to sign up!
Best Laptops
Check out the best laptops here!
Click here for more.
Frequently this problem arises when someone puts black squares over some text, then saves it as a PDF. They can't see the text so they assume it's gone, but with most PDF software it's simply covered and is trivial to extract.
With Adobe Acrobat pro it's as simple as opening the PDF, selecting the squares with the touchup object tool, and deleting them.
Even failing that (say, an encrypted PDF that doesn't permit editing) there are PDF cracking tools and text extraction tools that'll do it.
This is yet another sign that we just can't afford computer illiteracy anymore, and that people in positions of responsibility need to have some understanding of how their tools affect security. Arguably no "user" could be expected to know of this problem or similar ones like the MS Word document information leaks, but they need to get their business processes right so that people who _do_ know are bought in to confirm they're doign things right.
You don't have to be an expert to know when to ask for help.