FW: Document Corruption 101

Fabulous – the web-site linked to below is terrific: "We have all been in the situation where we have half-finished work due tomorrow. You can upload a unfinished word document and this tool will modify it so that it cannot be opened. You can send the corrupted file instead to buy yourself some extra time."

Just something to be aware of.

Ben

--
Ben Chapman, J.D.
ben.chapman@emory.edu
Asst Dean for IT, Emory University School of Law
T: 404-727-6948 F: 404-727-2202
gtalk, skype: benjamin.chapman

From: "Engsberg, Mark" <mengsbe@emory.edu>
Date: Fri, 20 Jan 2012 13:33:19 -0500
To: Anne Rector <arector@emory.edu>, Ben Chapman <ben.chapman@emory.edu>
Subject: FW: Document Corruption 101

Anne and Ben,

See the message below from my counterpart at Akron Law School. Perhaps you’ve already seen something like this, but it’s new to me. It’s ingenious, really, but in a bad kind of way. I guess it’s something else to “police.” Weary sigh….

Mark
___________________________________________
Mark Engsberg
Director of Library Services and Assistant Professor of Law
Hugh F. MacMillan Law Library
Emory University School of Law

From: lawlibdir-bounces@lists.washlaw.edu [mailto:lawlibdir-bounces@lists.washlaw.edu] On Behalf Of Richert,Paul
Sent: Friday, January 20, 2012 11:38 AM
To: List lawlibdir@lists. washlaw. edu (LawLibDir@lists.washlaw.edu)
Subject: [Lawlibdir] Document Corruption 101

At our faculty meeting yesterday the head of our Academic Committee reported one of our faculty members recently received a student paper in our learning management system’s drop box.

When the professor retrieved the Word file it was corrupted.

The student could not immediately send another one and claimed his copy was fine.

It turned out there are now web sites that advertise how you can get extra time to finish your papers by sending a bogus corrupted file to a naïve professor.

The one used was Document Corrupter but apparently there are at least twenty more such sites easily available to conveniently help a student send bogus files in different formats.

http://neddyy.net/docs/

Our faculty is planning to beef up procedures to make this excuse harder to use.

If you right click on a Word file before opening it and check its properties you can get some useful information that may help nail a miscreant student trying such techniques.

Of course Microsoft offers a way to strip this meta data before saving files as well.

Someone probably has come up with a web site to stick in bogus metadata as well!!

Paul Richert
Law Librarian and Professor of Law
richert@uakron.edu

The University of Akron School of Law Library
302 Buchtel Common
Akron, OH 44325

Tel: 330-972-6350
Fax: 330-972-4948

http://www.uakron.edu/law/library/about/profile.dot?identity=700375

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Submitted by ben.chapman on Mon, 01/23/2012 - 14:05

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Comments

jbazan3 months ago

RE: Document Corruption 101

Would this "work" for the student if the file was required to be in PDF format? Is it possible to require optically scanned documents?

Ultimately, would a court accept the comment that the submitted copy works on the computer of the submitter even if it does not open on the court's computer? I bet "no."

If I don't get a readable copy on or before the deadline, I can easily assign a grade of zero. Does that put a student at an "unfair disadvantage?"

From: teknoids-bounces@ruckus.law.cornell.edu [mailto:teknoids-bounces@ruckus.law.cornell.edu] On Behalf Of Chapman, Ben
Sent: Monday, January 23, 2012 1:04 PM
To: Teknoids
Subject: [teknoids] FW: Document Corruption 101

Fabulous - the web-site linked to below is terrific: "We have all been in the situation where we have half-finished work due tomorrow. You can upload a unfinished word document and this tool will modify it so that it cannot be opened. You can send the corrupted file instead to buy yourself some extra time."

Just something to be aware of.

Ben

--
Ben Chapman, J.D.
ben.chapman@emory.edu
Asst Dean for IT, Emory University School of Law
T: 404-727-6948 F: 404-727-2202
gtalk, skype: benjamin.chapman

From: "Engsberg, Mark" <mengsbe@emory.edu>
Date: Fri, 20 Jan 2012 13:33:19 -0500
To: Anne Rector <arector@emory.edu>, Ben Chapman <ben.chapman@emory.edu>
Subject: FW: Document Corruption 101

Anne and Ben,

See the message below from my counterpart at Akron Law School. Perhaps you've already seen something like this, but it's new to me. It's ingenious, really, but in a bad kind of way. I guess it's something else to "police." Weary sigh....

Mark
___________________________________________
Mark Engsberg
Director of Library Services and Assistant Professor of Law
Hugh F. MacMillan Law Library
Emory University School of Law

At our faculty meeting yesterday the head of our Academic Committee reported one of our faculty members recently received a student paper in our learning management system's drop box.

When the professor retrieved the Word file it was corrupted.

The student could not immediately send another one and claimed his copy was fine.

It turned out there are now web sites that advertise how you can get extra time to finish your papers by sending a bogus corrupted file to a naïve professor.

The one used was Document Corrupter but apparently there are at least twenty more such sites easily available to conveniently help a student send bogus files in different formats.

http://neddyy.net/docs/

Our faculty is planning to beef up procedures to make this excuse harder to use.

If you right click on a Word file before opening it and check its properties you can get some useful information that may help nail a miscreant student trying such techniques.

Of course Microsoft offers a way to strip this meta data before saving files as well.

Someone probably has come up with a web site to stick in bogus metadata as well!!

Paul Richert
Law Librarian and Professor of Law
richert@uakron.edu

The University of Akron School of Law Library
302 Buchtel Common
Akron, OH 44325

Tel: 330-972-6350
Fax: 330-972-4948

http://www.uakron.edu/law/library/about/profile.dot?identity=700375

________________________________

If you have received this message in error, please contact
the sender by reply e-mail message and destroy all copies of the
original message (including attachments).

Michael J McBride3 months ago

1. RE: FW: Document Corruption 101

Very interesting site indeed! Though from all the posts I have read, ultimately the student does have to hand in a completed, readable, uncorrupted document. Within that document, a right mouse click- Properties, then Details tab (in Office 2010) will show you the Meta Data of when the document actually was created and last saved. I am aware of programs that can scrub/erase that Meta Data, but I am not aware of any that can ALTER that Meta Data. That will be Armageddon if that ever happens!

It is upon the student to submit their work in a timely manner. So if they pull the submit a corrupted document to buy some extra time, but then submit a final paper with the Meta Data scrubbed that would confirm whether it is was completed on time or not, I am 99.99999% sure all of my law school faculty would consider the paper late and adjust the grade accordingly.

I do realize that undergraduate programs may not be as harsh with timely submissions, so the above situation then calls upon a judgment call on the student's character which obviously one can never be assured they judged correctly.

Regards,

Michael J. McBride, Esq.
Director of PC Support
Seton Hall University School of Law
Class of '00

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Today's Topics:

1. RE: FW: Document Corruption 101 (Brandon Abell)
2. RE: Classroom computer software (Melamut, Steven J)

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Tue, 24 Jan 2012 02:13:20 +0000
From: Brandon Abell <babell@PACIFIC.EDU>
Subject: RE: [teknoids] FW: Document Corruption 101
To: Teknoids <teknoids@ruckus.law.cornell.edu>
Message-ID:
<300AEF6CE6C3F94EB583FCAD982333EE3A6B71@exmb1.stk.pacific.edu>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

We've been playing with this off-and-on today in our office and my coworker made the discovery that this tool appears to just go through the entire file in hex and replace every instance of FF with 2A. There *should* be at least one occurrence of FF in a document, so if a student turns in a "corrupted" document that also coincidentally lacks the FF character anywhere, I would personally be inclined to tell him "Hey, this file looks just like the ones that have been run through this Doc Corrupter site. . ." and note the reaction. :) If somebody wants to write a point and click tool to do this check, that would be really convenient.

Anybody want to check our work/assumptions on this and confirm/disprove?

As an aside - because of this mass-replacement, it makes it impossible to reliably undo this corruption because there's no way of knowing which of the 2A characters belonged in the file to begin with.

Good times. . .

----------------------------
Brandon Abell
Library Technical Specialist
University of the Pacific
McGeorge School of Law

E-Mail: babell@pacific.edu
Phone: (916) 739-7029
Office: Library 151
----------------------------

From: teknoids-bounces@ruckus.law.cornell.edu [mailto:teknoids-bounces@ruckus.law.cornell.edu] On Behalf Of Richard Abbott
Sent: Monday, January 23, 2012 11:45 AM
To: Teknoids
Subject: Re: [teknoids] FW: Document Corruption 101

I just ran a test doc through that website (neddyy.net/docs/) and examined the results in a hex editor. The website only corrupts the file's header. The text body remains completely legible. I could have rebuilt the header of my test file, but instead I just deleted it and opened the resulting mass as raw text. This procedure destroys much of the formating but quickly recovered the text.

The corruption created by this website seems to follow a distinct pattern. It didn't add random info or overwrite anything. Feel free to send me any suspect files.

-Richard Abbott
rabbit@shaw.ca
Oregonrabbit@hushmail.com

Loftus Becker3 months ago

1. RE: FW: Document Corruption 101

I'm sure it wouldn't be that hard. Opening a newly created document with BBEdit, I could see the properties easily. BBEdit wouldn't let me save changes, but I'm sure that there's a bare-bones text editor around that would.

Alternatively ... I'd guess that just setting the clock back on the computer to some time before the due date, and making a change, would alter the "modified date".

-Lofty

On Jan 24, 2012, at 2:55 PM, Michael J McBride wrote:

> I am aware of programs that can scrub/erase that Meta Data, but I am not aware of any that can ALTER that Meta Data. That will be Armageddon if that ever happens!

glen.mcbeth3 months ago

1. RE: FW: Document Corruption 101

Here is my idea for combating this.

State in the syllabus that after sending in homework, via drop box or
email, students are required to subsequently retrieve a copy of the file
from the dropbox or sent folder, and check that it is a complete and
uncorrupted working file. If you subsequently receive a corrupt file,
just ask the student to bring a computer to your office, where they can
access the file from their sent folder or drop box and open it in front
of you, and too bad for them if they can not do it.

However, this may not always work for all of us when facing a crying
student.

On 1/24/2012 2:21 PM, Loftus Becker wrote:
> I'm sure it wouldn't be that hard. Opening a newly created document
> with BBEdit, I could see the properties easily. BBEdit wouldn't let me
> save changes, but I'm sure that there's a bare-bones text editor
> around that would.
>
> Alternatively ... I'd guess that just setting the clock back on the
> computer to some time before the due date, and making a change, would
> alter the "modified date".
>
> -Lofty
>
> On Jan 24, 2012, at 2:55 PM, Michael J McBride wrote:
>
>> I am aware of programs that can scrub/erase that Meta Data, but I am
>> not aware of any that can ALTER that Meta Data. That will be
>> Armageddon if that ever happens!
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> You are currently subscribed to teknoids as: glen.mcbeth@washburn.edu.
> To unsubscribe send a blank email to teknoids-leave@ruckus.law.cornell.edu
> --
> See the web interface at http://ruckus.law.cornell.edu/mailman/listinfo/teknoids to get your list password, unsubscribe, and view your list settings.

jmwhitco3 months ago

RE: 1. RE: FW: Document Corruption 101

There is also the issue of the distance education student who might not be in the same city as you at the time the file was due/submitted.

Jeff Whitcomb
Technology Services Manager
Cumberland School of Law - Samford University
205-726-4662
jmwhitco samford edu

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P Think before you print

From: teknoids-bounces@ruckus.law.cornell.edu [mailto:teknoids-bounces@ruckus.law.cornell.edu] On Behalf Of Glen McBeth
Sent: Friday, January 27, 2012 2:38 PM
To: Teknoids
Subject: Re: [teknoids] 1. RE: FW: Document Corruption 101

Here is my idea for combating this.

State in the syllabus that after sending in homework, via drop box or email, students are required to subsequently retrieve a copy of the file from the dropbox or sent folder, and check that it is a complete and uncorrupted working file. If you subsequently receive a corrupt file, just ask the student to bring a computer to your office, where they can access the file from their sent folder or drop box and open it in front of you, and too bad for them if they can not do it.

However, this may not always work for all of us when facing a crying student.

On 1/24/2012 2:21 PM, Loftus Becker wrote:
I'm sure it wouldn't be that hard. Opening a newly created document with BBEdit, I could see the properties easily. BBEdit wouldn't let me save changes, but I'm sure that there's a bare-bones text editor around that would.

Alternatively ... I'd guess that just setting the clock back on the computer to some time before the due date, and making a change, would alter the "modified date".

-Lofty

On Jan 24, 2012, at 2:55 PM, Michael J McBride wrote:

I am aware of programs that can scrub/erase that Meta Data, but I am not aware of any that can ALTER that Meta Data. That will be Armageddon if that ever happens!

_______________________________________________

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mperna3 months ago

RE: 1. RE: FW: Document Corruption 101

Maybe the site is capturing all of the "Papers" and creating an online repository for people to purchase in the future. I mean what's to stop them from parsing the words in the doc and creating a mytermpaper.com website?

Ahhh technology...

Matthew Perna
Director for Information Technology
Touro Law Center
225 Eastview Drive
Central Islip, NY 11722

EMail: mperna@tourolaw.edu
Phone: (631) 761 - 7072
Cell: (631) 708 - 6418
Fax: (631) 421 - 2675

Support:
EMail: IT@tourolaw.edu
Phone: (631) 761 - 7070

From: teknoids-bounces@ruckus.law.cornell.edu [mailto:teknoids-bounces@ruckus.law.cornell.edu] On Behalf Of Loftus Becker
Sent: Tuesday, January 24, 2012 3:21 PM
To: Teknoids
Subject: Re: [teknoids] 1. RE: FW: Document Corruption 101

Alternatively ... I'd guess that just setting the clock back on the computer to some time before the due date, and making a change, would alter the "modified date".

-Lofty

On Jan 24, 2012, at 2:55 PM, Michael J McBride wrote:

I am aware of programs that can scrub/erase that Meta Data, but I am not aware of any that can ALTER that Meta Data. That will be Armageddon if that ever happens!

mjewell3 months ago

1. RE: FW: Document Corruption 101

And we all know no one reads the fine print...

By uploading your document here, you herby grant exclusive access to said document for any and all purposes site creators can think or may have already thought of.

-Mike

Sent from my iPhone

On Jan 24, 2012, at 5:11 PM, "Matthew Perna" <MPerna@tourolaw.edu> wrote:

Maybe the site is capturing all of the “Papers” and creating an online repository for people to purchase in the future. I mean what’s to stop them from parsing the words in the doc and creating a mytermpaper.com website?

Ahhh technology…

Matthew Perna
Director for Information Technology
Touro Law Center
225 Eastview Drive
Central Islip, NY 11722

EMail: mperna@tourolaw.edu
Phone: (631) 761 - 7072
Cell: (631) 708 - 6418
Fax: (631) 421 - 2675

Support:
EMail: IT@tourolaw.edu
Phone: (631) 761 - 7070

Alternatively ... I'd guess that just setting the clock back on the computer to some time before the due date, and making a change, would alter the "modified date".

-Lofty

On Jan 24, 2012, at 2:55 PM, Michael J McBride wrote:

I am aware of programs that can scrub/erase that Meta Data, but I am not aware of any that can ALTER that Meta Data. That will be Armageddon if that ever happens!

_______________________________________________
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rabbit3 months ago