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Recreating uncensored Epstein PDFs from raw encoded attachments (neosmart.net)
submitted 9 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 19 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (5 children)

I need an ELI5 version of this. (Note: this comment is a critique of me, not the author or the content of the article.)

Edit: if “nerdsnipe” isn’t in the dictionary, it totally should be.

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  • [–] [S] 29 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

    Some of the Epstein emails were released as scanned PDFs of raw email format (See MIME)

    MIME formatted emails are ASCII based. To include an attachments, which can be binary, the MIME format specifies it must be encoded using base64. Base64 can always take binary input and return an ASCII output. This is trivial to reverse if you have the ASCII output.

    However, the font choice is inconvenient because l and 1 look the same.

    I'm a bit confused by the article is only discussing extracting PDFs while in actuality you can reverse any attachment including images.

    I am also no expert, so a smarter person will now correct me on anything I got wrong.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago

    I'm a bit confused by the article is only discussing extracting PDFs while in actuality you can reverse any attachment including images.

    I could see them not mentioning other types of attachments due to the subject matter underpinning the reasons for these documents in the first place. Most pervs wouldn't be bothered to put effort into boring PDFs, but might put in more effort for CSAM images.

    Not mentioning that this could be done for all attachment types was probably intentional.

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