Attachment issues: Files decomposing

Support
1

Hi there,

We’re finding that whenever we receive any attachment and decode it, it has been “stripped”.

A PDF document loses its name and extension and gets turned into a file called “data”, but at least content is readable.

A .DOCX or .PPTX is the worst. They gets decomposed outside of a single file and turns into hundreds of little files and folders showing the guts of the file in Open Office XML format. In order to recompose the documents we need to take all the folders and files, put them into a new empty ZIP file, remove the .zip extension and add a .pptx/.docx extension. Journalists can’t self service this. And I’ve only had success with this on a PC outside of Tails using PKWare to make the .zip file.

A simple .txt file also gets turned into a file named “data”

Is this a bug with SecureDrop in general or just our own instance? Or this behaviour is to be expected?

Help please.

Thanks,

-Jonathon

:slight_smile:

2

You could be falling foul of Nautilus’ auto-decompression feature. See the docs here for information on how to disable it and preserve filenames:

https://docs.securedrop.org/en/release-0.13.0/set_up_svs.html#ensure-filenames-are-preserved

3

Thanks! That sounds right.

Will test it out and confirm.

4

Thanks again!

That was it.

I had replaced the key a week ago or so due to a bad USB key and didn’t remember this key step.