[vlovich123]

I thought glyph spacing attacks are an old idea; like I recall reading about such ideas 10-20 years ago unless I’m misremembering. Can you clarify why it was considered “too sensitive” if the whole point of this effort is to showcase these attacks?

[mlissner]

It’s a fine line. Most redactions are for the good, to protect someone or something. For example even in the Epstein files, where some redactions are being abused, most redactions are protecting victims.

If there’s a way to undo huge amounts of redactions, that’d certainly be a net negative. Sort of like if encryption were suddenly broken, you wouldn’t publish a paper saying so.

Our goal has always been to educate about the problem so that it can be addressed. We didn’t have resources to push on the font metrics approach, so we stayed mostly quiet about it.

[btreecat]

> If there’s a way to undo huge amounts of redactions, that’d certainly be a net negative. Sort of like if encryption were suddenly broken, you wouldn’t publish a paper saying so.

I can't state emphatically enough how this is not the right mental playbook.

If you have found a vulnerability, it's likely someone else has too. By sitting on it, you only create more future victims.

Disclosure will lead to fixing this issue, mitigating it's precense, or switching tools/workflows, possibly a combination of. Sitting on it only ensures that folks who think they are protected, actually aren't.

[mlissner]

We’re familiar with vulnerability disclosure philosophies, but what if the problem can’t be fixed because there’s no forward secrecy for the hundreds of millions of documents that are already out there?

It’s tricky stuff and we have limited resources, unfortunately.

[btreecat]

>, but what if the problem can’t be fixed because there’s no forward secrecy for the hundreds of millions of documents that are already out there?

What if you are not the only folks who have found and exploited this vulnerability?

You can play the "what if" game to justify not doing the right thing all day long, when really it should be one "if" that guide you. What if someone else found this?

[opello]

So what is the state of the art in redaction? Re-publish the document with an insert that says [redaction] so that no (or maybe minimal) length side-channel exists? I imagine someone thinks about clever ideas and it would be fun to read about them and the trade-offs.

[vlovich123]

Given that hiding among and behind victims is how abusers continue, I’m not so sure redactions really are all that beneficial when you count future victims in the pool of interested parties. And the public interest certainly isn’t helped by secrecy and redactions and selective release.

While protecting victims is noble, something like this really needs the light of day and a truth and reconciliation commission so that everyone associated with the crime ring is punished and accounted for.

And no, if you do find somehow all encryption is mathematically broken, it’s your duty to publicize it even if existing secrets are jeopardized (you mitigate as best you can obviously in the short term) because it’s likely people more powerful than you might have that knowledge anyway and are engaged in asymmetric warfare.