Fergie's Tech Blog

NSA Issues 'Metadata' Guidelines for Agencies

Brian Krebs writes on Security Fix:

Following a series of foibles in which federal agencies and even the White House issued documents that contained hidden data that readers weren't meant to see, the the National Security Agency has issued guidelines [.pdf] for the federal government on removing revision histories and other so-called "metadata" from official documents before public release.

Metadata literally means "data about data", but that's not very descriptive. Essentially, metadata is automatically embedded in documents created with popular software such as Microsoft Word or Adobe Acrobat, and includes things like the document author's name, the date it was created, and often any changes or revisions that have been made and by whom.

posted by Fergie @ 1/24/2006 12:12:00 PM