Scraping Confidential Data in Software Simulation

Forum|Forum|15 years ago
May 8, 2010
1 reply
733 views

I wondered whether other folks have encountered this issue in development. I have captured confidential information from live environments, however, when the number of slides captured approaches 100 or more the concept of scarping that confidential data from 100 slides seems daunting. The only process I have arrived at is literally pulling each image into Photoshop or even MS Paint and hand editing each field. The problem of course is that getting the text and backgrounds to match on each slide and avoiding "screen flicker" is nearly impossible. Has anyone else encountered a similar problem? If so, other than using a training or development environment have you found any other solution?

Thanks,

Dfwenigma

Editing

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Captiv8r

Legend

Hi there

This will hopefully be much simpler than you are thinking.

When you captured the screens, odds are that in many of them the confidential data is in the same identical spot, no?

So here's a pretty simple fix. (Look ma, no Photochop needed!)

Insert a Highlight Box object on the first slide where you wish to eradicate the sensitive info. Size and position it so it covers the info. Yeah, I know you don't intend to call attention to it, but bear with me. (Some folks say bare with me, but I don't feel like disrobing at the moment. Hope you don't mind.)

Configure the Highlight Box so the fill color is identical to the background upon which the information is overlaid. The eyedropper tool is marvelous for that. Also ensure that there is no transparency. Got that done? Good! Next step...

Copy the Highlight Box and paste it onto all other slides where the information is in the same place. Remember, you can select more than one slide at a time. So if it's on perhaps 20 slides, select all 20 and paste. Whoosh! Didn't that feel awesome?

Okay, so at this point you have the sensitive information covered. Let's now perform the same steps as you would normally perform using Photochop. What you do is to visit each slide (sorry, but no way to do this en masse) right-click the Highlight Box and choose Merge Into Background. Now if you don't really wish to do this step you can probably omit it by simply configuring the first Highlight Box with no transition (fade in or fade out) before you do the copy/paste hokey pokey. But most folks want the information just GONE.

Rinse and repeat as necessary.

The final step is sometimes to introduce fictitious information to replace the sensitive true information. To do this, you insert a Transparent Text Caption containing the information you wish to see. Again, you can leave it as a Text Caption or you can choose to merge these into the background as well.

Hopefully this helps! Rick

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A

Anonymous

First thank you so much for the suggestion. Unfortunately I have run into this same issue before and your suggestion works so well - when the purpose is to mask information in web or cloud type environments. This problem is much stickier. I have tried the solutions you suggested - in fact I think somehow developers I have worked with in the past either stumbled into the suggestion you made themselves or alternately found it here.

This is stickier. These are nasty old legacy systems. Think 1960 - 1970 and you are in the ballpark. These run through an emulator (usually TN3270 style emulators) and the legacy system is black with green lettering. These are those nasty old systems where you put an "X" to select menus and submenus and use "PF" keys to navigate. They are quite common (still) in banking, finance,the government sector - the list goes on and on - and I encountered them in the telecommunications industry (believe it or not) about fifteen years ago.But I still see them and the issue I encounter is still pervasive. I thought they had gone the way of the dinosaur years ago. But alas, their demise is not to be. I can imagine folks in back offices at your banking institutions with home-grown applications like this - to this day - not clicking away with mice but happily running "server" side scripts with their PF keys. The results are not pretty for the end users and I'm not so sure the bullet-proof nature of these software applications is so snappy either. But that's another discussion. The theory I think is that if the world ended tomorrow these systems would survive. Besides these systems are secure (wink, wink).

One would think the solution is simple, just follow your instructions, replace the font and you're done. Any green font with the blank background (embedded) as you suggest. But alas, 'tis not the case dear reader. No this dragon is ugly. The lettering is green and bitmapped. And I have found no possible way to recreate the font. I think even if you bought font the problem would be that the letters would not be 8, 9, 10, 11 or 12 point - they would be some odd size that would be difficult to match due to screen resolution.

The problem of course is that the fields will be different each time. So as one records the simulation one advances from one field to another. One then must change the data in each screen. This is not peculiar by the way to any particular engagement - I have seen this beast and tried to slay it at least five times in my career - and thought it was dead, dead, dead until recently. However, it persists, it is pernicious, it is pervasive it is ugly, ugly, ugly.

If you or any folks here could suggest the fix for the green bit-mapped font - such that it adapts to the limitations of a black screen, is even and blends well with the screen shot - great. But I cannot see how one finds this type of bit-mapped font. I would be very surprised if anyone has recreated it and I would be very interested to see a solution that will look accurate on screen.

Here's a link to a screen shot - not my screen shot - but one from a sales catalog at a website - this one is "hawking" TN3270 emulators - the screen shot is a perfect example of the myriad systems I have seen - hopefully it illustrates what I am trying to illustrate here verbally:

http://www.sdisw.com/tn5250-ss.html

The example shot in the URL (provided above) does not have confidential data on it - it is simply a sample of the types of systems I have encountered, tried to capture and then been unable to edit properly. The reader will have to imagine the text with confidential data that must be replaced. Sadly many of these systems (though not all) were not built with training environments or those environments perhaps are not updated because the intention is to replace the legacy system - so there is little value in reinventing the wheel.

If this were easy folks - I would not post it here. I did not find it easy - if you dear reader find it decidedly so - please show me your meddle - because I am eager to find a response that will actually solve this beastly problem and slay the dragon.

Captiv8r

Legend

Hello again

Yeah, one would think the old 3270 emulators would be long dead by now.

Sorry, but the only thing I can think of to suggest here is to display one of these screens where hopefully you have gobs of large empty fields. Then type the fictitious information into the fields and screen capture it. Then save it out as smaller segments that would be overlaid (and merged). This way the font should be identical. And you can use the underline to aid in accurately placing the image before merging it.

Best of luck to you in finding a solution that seems amicable... Rick

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