Tattle Tale Word Documents

Rift · Post by **Rift** » Wed Sep 01, 2004 3:14 pm

Ever had a friend send you a .doc file made in word? im sure some if not most of us have. It's interesting the things you can find out in a .doc file written in word. I accidentially opened one up in notepad one night and found exactly where my friend had stored her .doc file on the hard drive, where the backup file was should i be a police officer and need it as evidence for something, it also told me the Preferred customer name on her computer, and her useraccount name because it was under documents and settings\username. I dont know if this is so much a vulnerability, but i know personaly i dont want anyone knowing any part of my filesystem as far as drive letters and file paths. NetUse can come quite in handy when you have an ip addy and a .doc file of someone who isnt well protected. you know? Here's an example site with a .doc file, open it in notepad once you download it..

[url=\"http://support01.avid.com/support/P...525696800605984\"]http://support01.avid.com/support/P...525696800605984[/url]

i dont know who Stuart Shuelenburg is but it seems that this file was written on his computer and was saved here:

C : \ W o r k S t u f f \ G L \ M e r i d i a n I I I p a r t N u m b e r s . d o c

backed up here:

C : \ T E M P \ A u t o R e c o v e r y s a v e o f M e r i d i a n I I I p a r t N u m b e r s . a s d

the funny thing is, some doc files store different information then others, i know that definately varies accross word versions.. and i know ill probably hear it, there are a lot of programs that do this, such as VB for example and many other compiled languages, they store filepaths in the exe's most times. you can always hex edit them out though without messing up the program. but word just seems to give out a lot of info, does anyone else think so? ill have a look for some more word doc files and see if i find anymore interesting stuff in em... btw if your Stuart Shuelenburg then sorry this isnt meant to be malicious toward you or any affiliated member such as family and friends

Rift · Post by **Rift** » Wed Sep 01, 2004 3:15 pm

i thought this was funny lol

[url=\"http://www.stopesso.com/campaign/Pentagon.doc\"]http://www.stopesso.com/campaign/Pentagon.doc[/url]

i havent gone through the whole file yet, but upon the info that word has stored in here, inside the picture information you can see the info that adobe stored in the pictures lol, just seemed funny, info embedded in a picture, embedded in a document with info embedded in the document from word, two times the fun *keeps looking*

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refering to the above doc
C : \ D o c u m e n t s a n d S e t t i n g s \ d d o n i g e r \ M y D o c u m e n t s \ A b r u p t C l i m a t e C h a n g e - 2 0 0 3 . d o c

lol ddonig is the username someone help me find the password, jk

Post by **Tami** » Wed Sep 01, 2004 4:14 pm

Is there a way to prevent Word from passing on this information, or a better programme to use? I can't always use a .txt file as my editors require articles saved as a .doc or .rtf. Does WordPad do the same thing?

Rift · Post by **Rift** » Wed Sep 01, 2004 4:20 pm

[quote name=\'Adaera\' date=\'Sep 1 2004, 11:14 AM\']Is there a way to prevent Word from passing on this information, or a better programme to use? I can't always use a .txt file as my editors require articles saved as a .doc or .rtf. Does WordPad do the same thing?
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well preventing word from doing it would mean you couldnt use the .doc format, but it embeds in whatever it can including exporting html files from word. Wordpad, as you questioned, will not do t his to you. the most "code" it puts in usualy are some control characters to define the doc type, or some rtf code that just simply gives font info, margin info, sizes b 0 or 1, (bold on or off) stuff like that, no personal info. i think it's safer using wordpad, it just doesnt have as many options as word, but word has no reason to have to be putting that crap in there, and if they do they could easily encode it, but dont.

Post by **Tami** » Thu Sep 02, 2004 11:57 am

LOL typical ms--they "could" but they "don't" then wonder why they get blamed for exploits, etc.

Thank you for the information; I tend to use wordpad alot more lately anyway-loads faster, and for what I'm doing, it suits just fine. Now there's more incentive to use it more <img src=\'http://www.killanet.net/forum3/public/s ... igwink.gif\' class=\'bbc_emoticon\' alt=\';)\' />

mobil1_oils · Post by **mobil1_oils** » Thu Sep 02, 2004 2:45 pm

[b][i][color=\"gray\"][font=\"tahoma\"]Thats amazing, even a file from such a "Secure" source contains the usernames and filepaths. It seems to me microsoft could do alot more to protect this sorta stuff, even basic encryption would be better than storing it in such a raw way such as that. [/b][/i][/color][/font]