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posted by cmn32480 on Sunday August 30 2015, @05:13PM   Printer-friendly
from the security-is-overrated dept.

This humourous essay [PDF] on modern computer security, I thought would be an interesting read for SN; here's an excerpt.

Security research is the continual process of discovering that your spaceship is a deathtrap. However, as John F. Kennedy once said, "SCREW IT WE'RE GOING TO THE MOON." I cannot live my life in fear because someone named PhreakusMaximus at DefConHat 2014 showed that you can induce peanut allergies at a distance using an SMS message and a lock of your victim's hair. If that's how it is, I accept it and move on. Thinking about security is like thinking about where to ride your motorcycle: the safe places are no fun, and the fun places are not safe. I shall ride wherever my spirit takes me, and I shall find my Gigantic Martian Insect Party, and I will, uh, probably be rent asunder by huge cryptozoological mandibles, but I will die like Thomas Jefferson: free, defiant, and without a security label.

[Also Covered By]: Schneier on Security


Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Sunday August 30 2015, @07:15PM

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Sunday August 30 2015, @07:15PM (#229938) Journal

    There are a number of PDF readers, and writers as well. PDF isn't especially secure, nor is it especially insecure. Adobe reader, however, has proven to be terribly insecure.

    $ pacman -Ss PDF
    extra/cups-pdf 2.6.1-2 [installed]
            PDF printer for cups
    extra/evince 3.16.1-1 (gnome)
            Document viewer (PDF, Postscript, djvu, tiff, dvi, XPS, SyncTex support with
            gedit, comics books (cbr,cbz,cb7 and cbt))
    extra/gv 3.7.4-2
            A program to view PostScript and PDF documents
    extra/poppler 0.33.0-1 [installed]
            PDF rendering library based on xpdf 3.0
    extra/poppler-data 0.4.7-1
            Encoding data for the poppler PDF rendering library
    extra/potrace 1.12-1
            Utility for tracing a bitmap (input: PBM,PGM,PPM,BMP; output:
            EPS,PS,PDF,SVG,DXF,PGM,Gimppath,XFig)
    extra/pstoedit 3.70-2
            Translates PostScript and PDF graphics into other vector formats
    extra/qpdf 5.1.3-1 [installed]
            QPDF: A Content-Preserving PDF Transformation System
    extra/texlive-bin 2014.34260-8 [installed]
            TeX Live binaries
    extra/zsh-doc 5.0.8-1
            Info, HTML and PDF format of the ZSH documentation
    community/apvlv 0.1.5-1
            PDF/DJVU/TXT viewer which behaves like Vim
    community/dblatex 0.3.4-2 [installed]
            DocBook (XML and SGML) to DVI, PDF, PostScript converter using latex.
    community/epdfview 0.1.8-6 [installed]
            Lightweight PDF document viewer
    community/erlang-docs 18.0-1
            HTML and PDF documentation for Erlang
    community/gambas3-gb-pdf 3.7.1-2 (gambas3)
            PDF component
    community/impressive 0.11.0b-1
            A fancy PDF presentation program (previously known as KeyJNote).
    community/libharu 2.3.0-1
            C library for generating PDF documents
    community/mupdf 1.7_a-2
            Lightweight PDF and XPS viewer
    community/pdf2djvu 0.8.1-1
            Creates DjVu files from PDF files
    community/pdf2svg 0.2.2-1
            A pdf to svg converter
    community/pdfgrep 1.3.2-1
            A tool to search text in PDF files
    community/pdflib-lite 7.0.5p3-3
            PDF manipulation library.
    community/pdfmod 0.9.1-6
            Simple application for modifying PDF written in C Sharp
    community/pdfsam 2.2.4-1
            A free open source tool to split and merge pdf documents
    community/podofo 0.9.3-1 [installed]
            A C++ library to work with the PDF file format
    community/python-pyx 0.14-1
            Python library for the creation of PostScript and PDF files
    community/python-reportlab 3.2.0-1
            A proven industry-strength PDF generating solution
    community/python2-pdfrw 0.1-3
            Basic PDF file manipulation library
    community/python2-pychart 1.39-8
            Python library for creating Encapsulated Postscript, PDF, PNG, or SVG
            charts.
    community/python2-pyx 0.12.1-2
            Python library for the creation of PostScript and PDF files
    community/python2-reportlab 3.2.0-1
            A proven industry-strength PDF generating solution
    community/python2-rst2pdf 0.93-8
            Create PDFs from simple text markup, no LaTeX required
    community/wkhtmltopdf 0.12.2.1-1
            Command line tools to render HTML into PDF and various image formats
    community/x-docs-pdf 20140422-1
            X documentation
    community/zathura-pdf-mupdf 0.2.8-1
            PDF support for Zathura (MuPDF backend)
    community/zathura-pdf-poppler 0.2.5-2
            Adds pdf support to zathura by using the poppler engine

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +2  
       Insightful=1, Informative=1, Total=2
    Extra 'Insightful' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   4