At Thu, 8 Oct 2026 17:17:04 -0400 songbird <[email protected]> wrote:
> > any sandboxed programs or scripts that will spit out an image > or other safe version for me to look at that isn't full of crud? > i don't normally look at them and just delete them... > I just use xpdf. A pretty basic PDF viewer. I don't think it supports any sort of PDF scripting, etc. I don't think any Linux PDF viewers support things like scripting in PDFs. Probably the only "dangerous" thing in these PDFs are external links, Otherwise I think many of them are just a form of "social engineering": eg they are an "invoice" listing a payment, with a phone number to call to get a refund. The invoice is fake and your account was never charged, they want you to call the number and then they tell you your computer was hacked and you need to download and install some remote admin software and the person you are talking to will take over your machine, generate a fake refund transfer to your bank account and make a mistake and add an extra zero or two, and then "freak out" and have you "return" the excess refund in cash or gift cards or something like that, The PDF *looks* real and has the real logos, but there are things seriously wrong with it: stuff like it is something bought from Amazon and paid for with PayPal -- the thing is, Amazon does NOT take PayPal as a payment method, so this is an impossible invoice. Alternitively, you can install poppler-utils, which include a whole batch of programs that deal with PDF files: getting info, converting to other formats (html, text), extracting images, listing fonts, etc. > yes, i've looked at what the testing repository says for > packages with keywords pdf and secure. there is a lot of > them and the descriptions don't really tell me much about > their capabilities of handling suspicious pdfs.. > > i get a message from someone saying they are sending me $. i > don't have any arrangements set up like that so i know it is a > spammer phishing, but i am curious what they are claiming they're > sending me. > > thanks! :) > > > songbird > > > -- Robert Heller -- Cell: 413-658-7953 GV: 978-633-5364 Deepwoods Software -- Custom Software Services http://www.deepsoft.com/ -- Linux Administration Services [email protected] -- Webhosting Services
