[govsec] Morris Worm and a Change in Direction

[jmetz at intac.com]

Plain text does not convey all the needed information in any form other
than a verbal statement

charts, photos, personal data, all need images to convey information for
the user (recipient) to comprehend striping everything down to plain text
removes far too much in data transmission

Plain text would be totally unusable in conveying  a description of an
individual on a watch list going through customs

Show me a way to communicate financial trends without a well defined pie
chart or the communications network of suspect individuals without a dream
catcher chart

the too simple solution to government communications leads to more
problems than it is worth

Pd's as a document form can strip away extraneous information print
exactly what was as it was written originally (signatures , authorizations
etc.)

Email even text Email can still have code buried in it with-in the header
or the links. which would be needed to see the visual information that
might be needed to fain the information that a pdf can include in process.

The inhouse mail trnsport (mail server) allows internal and externl
comunications as are needed it is most important to have this be the
approprate place to stop potential intrusions and it should be the focus
point of intrusion and malware dection

John Metzger



> On Fri, 05 Nov 2004, jmetz at intac.com wrote:
>
>> You are looking at the situation as an individual user, I was suggesting
>> that the mail server do the conversion. The user and sender become
>> ir-relevant to the process.
>>
>> The user would only see the end product the message. In the conversion
>> the
>> senders method is or would be of no consequence because it would be
>> stopped and converted to a safe message prior to delivery.
>
> Yes, but why do you want to use PDF for that ?
> Plain text would be safer in my opinion.
>
> --
> gpg fp: 8a7e 9719 b38d 97c6 6af0  d345 12a0 3708 2c8c 3c11
> http://boklm.mars-attacks.org/
> _______________________________________________
> govsec mailing list
> govsec at attrition.org
> http://www.attrition.org/mailman/listinfo/govsec
>