Handling PDFs in Qubes

[Micah Lee]

I just wrote a quick blog post about this:
https://micahflee.com/2016/07/how-qubes-makes-handling-pdfs-way-safer/

[raah...@gmail.com]

On Thursday, July 21, 2016 at 1:49:05 PM UTC-4, Micah Lee wrote:
> I just wrote a quick blog post about this:
> https://micahflee.com/2016/07/how-qubes-makes-handling-pdfs-way-safer/

nice read.

[Andrew David Wong]

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Excellent, Micah! Thank you for posting this!

- --
Andrew David Wong (Axon)
Community Manager, Qubes OS
https://www.qubes-os.org
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[Marek Marczykowski-Górecki]

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On Thu, Jul 21, 2016 at 01:48:59PM -0400, Micah Lee wrote:
> I just wrote a quick blog post about this:
> https://micahflee.com/2016/07/how-qubes-makes-handling-pdfs-way-safer/

Nice post :)

Minor correction: "It copies the trusted PDF back to the VM" - that
would mean that compromised DispVM (by the very same PDF) could pass it
back unmodified instead of the sanitized one. It isn't what is done
there - it pass only very simple representation of the file (bitmap in
this case), then reassemble PDF in the calling VM.
But I'm not sure if it worth mentioning in a high level description.

- --
Best Regards,
Marek Marczykowski-Górecki
Invisible Things Lab
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
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[Micah Lee]

On 07/21/2016 02:39 PM, Marek Marczykowski-Górecki wrote:
> Minor correction: "It copies the trusted PDF back to the VM" - that
> would mean that compromised DispVM (by the very same PDF) could pass it
> back unmodified instead of the sanitized one. It isn't what is done
> there - it pass only very simple representation of the file (bitmap in
> this case), then reassemble PDF in the calling VM.
> But I'm not sure if it worth mentioning in a high level description.

Oh cool. I just added an update the post to reflect this.