Formula One gaffe reveals Ferrari and McLaren secrets

Wow, we�ve talked about securing metadata in the past, but this one takes the cake.

Notes from a meeting of the World Motor Sports Council were released recently by the FIA. The document was redacted, as you can see from the example below:

However, as F1Fanatic found out, simply copying and pasting the text into another document reveals the redacted text. In this case, I simply copied the text into Word:

Nigel TOZZI

He was paid around 300 000 to 400 000 pounds per annum. Is that correct?

Apparently, the person responsible for redacting the document simply drew a black box around the sensitive text, not realizing that the underlying text was still available. I feel a bit sorry for the poor sod who did this. Simply copy-protecting the PDF would have prevented this type of thing from occurring.

The PDF (at the time of this posting) is still up, here. I�ve also archived a copy here.

Alex Eckelberry
(Thanks Francesco)