_ RU.OS.CMP (2:5077/15.22) _________________________________________ RU.OS.CMP _
From : john gladkih 2:5020/1666 10 Oct 99 21:52:50
Subj : :) :)
________________________________________________________________________________
From: john gladkih <[email protected]>
Hi!
Office 98 Security: Microsoft Annual Report
Date: Mon, 4 Oct 1999 11:15:03 -0400
Subject: Was the Microsoft annual report produced on a Mac?
From: "Richard M. Smith"
Hello,
Microsoft Word documents are notorious for containing private
information in file headers that
people would sometimes rather not see get out. An interesting example is
the 1999 Microsoft
annual report which was released on the Web last week as a Word
document. The file
headers indicate that the annual report was created on a Macintosh and
not Windows!
See for yourself at the Word version of the annual report.
Last evening I downloaded the annual report and used a .DOC file dumper
utility to display its
contents. I found the following revision log in the file:
0008FB2B: Kerry Leimer Jay's G3:Temporary Items:Word Work File A 3
0008FB9D: Kerry Leimer Jay's G3:Desktop Folder:ar99.doc
0008FBF9: Kerry Leimer.Jay's G3:Temporary Items:Word Work File A 2862
0008FC71: Kerry Leimer Jay's G3:Desktop Folder:ar99.doc
0008FCCD: Kerry Leimer Jay's G3:Desktop Folder:ar99.doc
0008FD29: Kerry Leimer Jay's G3:Temporary Items:AutoRecovery save of
ar99.doc
0008FDB1: Kerry Leimer Jay's G3:Desktop Folder:ar99.doc
0008FE0D: Kerry Leimer Jay's G3:Temporary Items:AutoRecovery save of
ar99.doc
0008FE95: Kerry Leimer Jay's G3:Jay's
Documents:current:Microsoft_AR99:MSFT_WEB:
msft:download:ar99.doc
0008FF4F: Kerry Leimer Jay's G3:Jay's
Documents:current:Microsoft_AR99:MSFT_WEB:
msft:ar99:downloads:ar99.doc
The revision log clearly shows Macintosh-style file paths and the
computer name appears to
indicate that the document was edited on a Macintosh G3 system. In
addition, other fields in the
file header say that the file was created and edited by Word 98 for the
Macintosh:
Created by: Word 98 for Macintosh (Build 9/30/98)
Revised by: Word 98 for Macintosh (Build 9/30/98)
Microsoft does provide instructions on their Web site on how to remove
some of this private
information from a Word document file before it is publicly distributed.
These instructions can
be found at:
"WD97: How to Minimize Metadata in Microsoft Word Documents"
However the rules are quite complicated and a better choice, I believe,
is to use RTF or HTML
for public documents. In the future, I would like to see an option to
the save command in Word
to remove all this extra information from a document file before it is
written to disk.
Richard M. Smith
http://www.tiac.net/users/smiths
--
John, http://www.t.uz, mailto:[email protected]--- tin/pre-1.4-19990517 ("Psychonaut") (UNIX) (SunOS/5.7 (i86pc)) * Origin: Gates to Hell (2:5020/1666@fidonet)
