Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with plaintext

How not to store plaintext passwords?

bottlebrushtree — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 09:56:51 -0800

Best practices for storing OracleDB/mysql/ldap/smtp/etc... system passwords for enterprise application integration use? I'm working with a vendor who currently is storing passwords in plain text in configuration files.

If you've ever configured Wordpress you are familiar with how your mysql password gets placed in plain text in the wp-config.php file.
This vendor is doing a similar thing for mysql, ldap, smtp, etc...

This has made some people uncomfortable.

I'd like some suggestions for best practices to minimize the use of passwords in plaintext (or trivially encoded text) in text configuration files.

These passwords are being used to drive external databases, ldap auth, smtp sending, etc...

Their Java / Tomcat application is expected to be running 24/7 as a Server. This particular instance will be on Windows Server 2003 though Linux is also supported.

It would be nice if it would be possible to have unattended restarting of the application without a user having to enter in a master password, but if that is the only solution we may be comfortable with it.

Some background:

The application uses LDAP to authenticate users (and hence has the LDAP system password in a configuration file)

The application stores its data in a SQL database (Oracle in this case, though they also support mysql. We have to stay on Oracle)

The application sends mail using SMTP

Thanks.

Thunderbird in plain text

desjardins — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 07:39:28 -0800

How do I make everything appear in plain text in Mozilla Thunderbird? (using version 2.0.0.22 on Windows XP). I do not want to see any images, don't want to be asked if I want to see them, and I don't want anything to appear in HTML, including RSS feeds. I don't want to see people's cutesy stationary or Twitter's background colors when it notifies me of a new follower. I want black text on a white background, et rien de plus. I click "Show the article summary instead of loading the web page" when I subscribe to an RSS feed but the web page still loads. This was with a Yahoo News RSS feed (don't judge me). Do I need to use plain text news feeds? Does anyone use these anymore or is everything HTML?

Bonus question: How do I force Thunderbird to minimize to the system tray?

working with a corrupted XML file

sparrows — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 15:01:23 -0800

Seeking any way to view the contents of a (possibly corrupted) XML file. It's the database file from a Mac app that manages plain-text notes. Please help me force a look at the human-readable text that's somehow inside this file. I hope I am just missing something basic.

The file is about 6MB and it has the extension .nbdb. The app that created it is called Mark/Space Notebook. I'm running Mac OS 10.4.11.

The result when I open the file with Text Edit is an XML document where most of the contents is just a stream of text like UAcgBlABoAGIA... (Details in the first answer below, if you need.)

More info, if helpful:
Mark/Space Notebook is the text-notes-management app that came with Missing Sync for BlackBerry, which I bought in 2007. Both the syncing and this notes app worked fine for a year. Then I stopped using the BlackBerry and I switched to a better notes-management app from another company. So I started manually transferring my notes from M/S NB to this new app, but I wasn't close to finished when, one day, M/S NB suddenly wouldn't start up. Instead, any attempt to open it resulted in the dialog, "Your database was created with a pre-release version of Notebook and cannot be opened."

After a long and frustrating experience with two tech support people -- including installing and reinstalling other versions of the app -- their conclusion was that there is no issue at all with app version; my database file is just corrupted. (Yes, the app can produce new, openable databases just fine, so I think the support guys are right and it is the file itself.)

Their only solution now is that I email them the file so they can open it and send me back the text it contains. I can't do that; this is confidential info I would never share with a stranger (even one who'd inspired trust already with consistently clueful communication, which these guys have not).

All my backups of the file produce the same error because I apparently don't have any from before whenever it was corrupted (yes, I have definitely learned a lesson about retaining old baks). The Blackberry itself is long since wiped and sold, so I can't just look at the copies of the notes that were on the BB.

Plain Text Password in Welcome Email

TauLepton — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 23:50:51 -0800

Online Security Filter: Welcome email contained plain text password. Specific examples of why this is bad needed. I know this is a bad security practice. But why? My searching is coming up blank, so I'm turning to AskMeFi-ers.

I want to reply with documentation to the below conversation. No opinions, please; given that mine didn't really amount to much for them. :-)

(The site in question didn't ask for my cc # to sign up, but the same credentials would be used to make a purchase. At that time, a cc # is attached to the account.)

==============================
Comment: I just signed up for an account. As this is a shopping site, I used a password that I wish to remain secure. However, I just received an email thanking me for signing up. It contained my password in clear text. This type of security breach gives me concern for shopping with *****.
==============================
Thanks for the feedback Julie. I don't agree with you that this is a major security breach, but I will consider it in the next edition of our cart.

AJ
==============================

How to back up entire sms threads (BlackBerry / Mac)?

allterrainbrain — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 13:13:21 -0800

How can I preserve / back up long sms conversations with one other person -- simply as long chunks of plain text containing entire conversations? The other person has an old cell phone that doesn't do anything special (although soon he might have an iPhone), and I have a BlackBerry, which is only able to preserve *single* sms messages, one at a time (its "forward as" function will let you send one sms, as an email or in other forms). That would be crazy-laborious for backing up long threads of sms messages.

So far I've just been typing out the messages and dates/times (while looking at my BB's screen) into a plain text file on my computer. Also kind of laborious.

The only way for a BB to back up an entire sms thread appears to be using the PC-only BlackBerry Desktop software (I have a Mac). So I guess I'm looking for a third-party sms backup solution.

One solution I can imagine is that my sms texts would come both to my bb and to another account somewhere, and from the other account I could generate long plain-text files listing all the messages ever -- or it would auto-generate one text file for every 50 or 100 sms messages or whatever.

Plaintext and Excel

imposster — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 10:23:00 -0800

MS Excel: I need to place quotation marks around the numbers in a column. Is there a better way to do this than I am currently trying or is there a plaintext spreadsheet editor that would be a better solution? Right now, I end up inserting two columns filled with quotation marks around the column of numbers - saving as a csv - opening in Notepad (where the single marks appear as four marks) - edit and replace the spaces between the columns and replace the 4 quotation marks with one on either side of the number. This is then copied and pasted back into Excel where most of the time the quotation marks do not appear (even when the cells are formatted as text). Is there such a thing as a plaintext spreadsheet editor that would work better for this?

Example:
I need to turn this -
1001
1002
1003
Into this -
"1001"
"1002"
"1003"

Can this be decrypted?

Blazecock Pileon — Fri, 04 Aug 2006 10:52:36 -0800

Is Scientific American's spell-checker broken? (via justkevin) This post title has the structure of ciphertext:

Gbalf Xozmn Ram Rqzyk Wtacu Lkugc Aaxjx Owkyu Dkoxk Zamdg Bnuio Nmrxk Zmqyf Nqeog Ziqxf Gutxe Nkmxd Gzmqj Brqge Kxkfs Qqzui Nactg Djfnq Eenaa Xjnk

Are there strategies for analyzing and decoding this text?

How can I convert a jpeg to plain text?

zembla3 — Thu, 16 Mar 2006 06:16:20 -0800

I am a journalist who sometimes needs to send article clips to prospective employers. I have scanned the newspaper articles and saved them as jpeg files. Is there a program that will allow me to convert the jpeg files to plain text? The jpeg files are too large to e-mail, and I really just need to send the text of the articles.

Which PDA: just for typing up plaintext?

vanoakenfold — Mon, 09 Jan 2006 08:58:39 -0800

PDAfilter: I know essentially zero about PDAs except generally what they do and what they look like. I'm looking for one pretty much just for... ...typing up ideas when I'm at work so I don't have to write it all out by hand, and I think of quite a bit. I also have a blog and think of good ideas to write about, so I could effectively write the whole blog entry at work. Is there a cheapish PDA (color screen doesn't matter much) that I can use one of those nifty portable foldout keyboards, and upload stuff to the HD at home like a USB drive (or with an SD card)? I pretty just need a plaintext editor.

cataloging your books online.

mecran01 — Fri, 14 Oct 2005 07:21:08 -0800

In this metatalk thread I was trying to find a link to a media cataloging web app. What I am trying to do is take a text file of about 1,000 books, delimited by comma, and import it into one of these online social folksonomified library catalogs. Do you know of a free, friendly library web app that allows for importing of text files (I don't have the ISBN numbers, so that rules out LibraryThing) I also don't mind installing a php app, as long as it uses flat text files (it's for a friend who doesn't want to play with mysql)

Convert PDF With Greek Characters To Plain Text File?

kchristidis — Sun, 06 Jun 2004 20:33:23 -0800

Trying to convert a PDF file to plain text, but the result is hieroglyphics. [more inside] The catch is, the PDF file (which is not secured/password-protected, in case anyone wonders) contains Greek text. Now, that shouldn't be a catch, because I've got the most common Greek fonts installed.

But.

I've tried Adobe's online PDF-to-HTML text, I've tried Acrobat's (v5.0) "Save as RTF" feature, I've selected the text manually in Acrobat & then pasted it to Word, all with the same ugly result: hieroglyphics appearing instead of actual text (screenshot).

This screenshot says that a font called "TimesNewRomanPSMT" is used (in that same screenshot, you can see some of the text I'm trying to copy). I've Googled it, and all three sites that were supposed to carry a Greek version of it are offline. (In case someone asks, I do have "Times New Roman" --and as I said, all the popular fonts in their Greek encodings-- installed, but it doesn't do the trick unfortunately.)

First of all, is this is a font issue, as I suspect, or not? And most importantly; can someone help me solve this problem? I'm stuck here.

Thanks, people.

Is the CMS TextPattern worth checking out yet?

wendell — Tue, 02 Mar 2004 12:12:33 -0800

CMSFilter: After hearing about Dean Allen's TextPattern on and off for the longest time without being able to actually try it, it's now available in what he calls a "gamma" version that he's been updating and bugfixing for the last week. Is it worth the time to check out or not, or not yet? And what's so special (or not or not yet) about this particular pile of code?