pdf files Archives - The Silicon Underground

How to encrypt PDF files for free

Dave Farquhar — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 00:22:06 +0000

Yesterday I wrote about the importance of encrypting documents before you send them via e-mail. But what if you don’t have a PDF creator, other than Microsoft Office or Open/Libre Office? It turns out you can encrypt PDF documents, including

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Certifications are a scam! A rebuttal

Dave Farquhar — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 23:05:07 +0000

I overheard a couple of people talking a few weeks ago, and one said, flat out, “Certifications are a scam!” As one who has two security certifications (Security+ and CISSP), I disagree. Now that I’ve had my first post-CISSP professional

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I’m tempted by this Nook deal

Dave Farquhar — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 11:59:12 +0000

Kmart is selling the Nook Simple Touch–the e-ink, black-and-white version–for $70, which is nearly 30% off. I’m tempted. Very tempted. Tempted even to buy one and just use it as–drum roll–an e-reader. Disappointed in me? Sure, I might root it

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End of the innocence for Mac security

Dave Farquhar — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 11:14:08 +0000

Antivirus vendor Kapersky has identified a new trojan horse targetting Macintoshes. It spreads a botnet based somewhere in China via an infected Microsoft Word document, typically sent as an e-mail attachment. The spin is that if you don’t use Word

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There’s a 61% chance the Adobe software you run at work is out of date

Dave Farquhar — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 14:03:28 +0000

I read this week that 61% of Adobe Reader installations in workplaces is out of date. That’s very bad. Very, very bad. Because Adobe Reader is trivially easy to exploit, and there’s more sensitive information to steal on corporate PCs

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Pipe output to the clipboard in Windows

Dave Farquhar — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 14:03:52 +0000

Besides all the changes to the GUI that happened post-Windows XP, they also made one useful change to the command prompt. When you run a command, it’s now possible to pipe output to the clipboard. If you’re like me and

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Happy Patch Tuesday, September 2011

Dave Farquhar — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 23:38:48 +0000

Microsoft has five updates and Adobe has two for us on this fine Patch Tuesday, in addition to a patch Mozilla pushed out for Firefox last week. Don’t get too complacent if you run something other than Windows. If you

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How to view questionable PDFs safely

Dave Farquhar — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 12:16:01 +0000

I said Tuesday that it’s a bad idea to download and view PDF (Adobe Acrobat/Adobe Reader) documents from questionable sources, but I didn’t really elaborate on why, nor did I tell you how to view questionable PDFs safely. The reason

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Fide et fortitudine

Dave Farquhar — Wed, 14 Nov 2001 17:15:54 +0000

Fide et fortitudine. That's the motto on my family crest. It seems appropriate. If I didn't have fidelity and fortitude, I wouldn't be making this post, because I wouldn't care. I'd talk about how to use Samba and Ghostscript and your favorite free Unix to set up a print server that spits out Acrobat-compatible PDF files or something.

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Memoirs of writing a book

Dave Farquhar — Fri, 12 Oct 2001 17:21:17 +0000

Book memoirs. I got e-mail yesterday asking me to reflect back on dealing with a publisher while writing a book. I'll never talk publicly about specifics, and I'm not even positive how much I've told my closest friends, for that matter. But it got me thinking.

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