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Re:Elsevier embeds a hash in the PDF metadata that is unique... by amelius on Wednesday January 26, 2022 @08:13AM (#30084996)
What if the files are still different?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography

Re:Elsevier embeds a hash in the PDF metadata that is unique... by steerablesafe on Wednesday January 26, 2022 @08:35AM (#30085174)
Then your tool is incomplete. Steganography works by encoding information into side channels, like precise positioning of words in the PDF, fonts, etc...

Your tool can be as crude as running the document through pdftotext and only keeping the text output. It can just throw away all these possible side channels that are not relevant to the actual content.

Others mentioned other more sophisticated side channels, as rewording sentences, but I'm sure authors would not welcome that.

Re:Elsevier embeds a hash in the PDF metadata that is unique... by nisegami on Wednesday January 26, 2022 @09:04AM (#30085478)
If the bits are identical, where does the hidden information live?