Information Flow in the Peer-Reviewing Process

Abstract

We investigate a new type of information flow in the electronic publishing process. We show that the use of PostScript in this process introduces serious confidentiality issues. In particular, we explain how the reviewer's anonymity in the peer-reviewing process can be compromised by maliciously prepared PostScript documents. A demonstration of this attack is available. We briefly discuss how this attack can be extended to other document formats as well.