Hello,
I have OpenOffice on a USB drive. I want to work on confidential documents when I plug it into other computers. If I do this, will any part of the file, image of it, keystrokes, etc. be left on the host computer? Or, if i use OpenOffice portable on a document from the USB drive, does all of the information stay on the USB drive or does any of the file information make it to the computer?
Thanks
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Security, Privacy, Confidentiality, and Anonymity with documents
March 17, 2009 - 7:52pm
#1
Security, Privacy, Confidentiality, and Anonymity with documents
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The fact that OpenOffice was run, and maybe a record of the name of the file could potentially be left behind, but as for data actually contained in the file, that remains wherever the file is saved to.
The developer formerly known as ZGitRDun8705
What level of paranoia do you subscribe to?
How valuable would the documents be to an attacker?
How technically aware would an attacker be?
For example, if someone was to install a keylogger on the machine before you used it, then they could track all your keypresses for the session.
Or, alternately, if while you have OOo open, it gets swapped out to the paging file, then portions of your document will be written to the disk of the PC in that file, and will not be overwritten until that portion of the paging file is reused by the system. This means that they could theoretically be recovered by a sufficiently skilled and motivated attacker.
But, that said, for normal purposes, it is safe. OOo Portable does not knowingly save any of your personal data, settings, or files to the hard drive of the machine.
You say OpenOffice, but do you mean OpenOfficePortable?
Jim
neutron1132 (at) usa (dot) com
it might be usefull to read the keynotes..
https://portableapps.com/support/safe_portable_app-ing
the virus problem described there is only one aspect of safe app-ing
My advice: do all your work depending on privacy on your own trusted PC, even your own office PC will have keyloggers or more...
Edit: took some time to find that again...
http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/10things/?p=322
someone already posted this short review some time ago
"Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisici elit, sed eiusmod tempor incidunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis .." Friday Next -
"May The Schwartz be with You!" Yogurt the Yoda
What do yo mean by "other computers" ?
Are they "other computers" within your organisation or just any computer
you happen to have access to ? .
If the documents are "confidential" in a legal sense you should not under any
circumstances present them to a computer that is not under the control of, or approved by, your organisation .
It is SO easy to copy all or selected content from any external
media automatically without your knowledge..