Hey everyone! I'm facing a bit of a strange situation with my laptop. It's completely isolated due to strict regulations—no internet, no flash drives, and only a clean installation of Windows 11 with Firefox. The only thing connected is a printer. I've been trying to manually type out a ton of text, which is a massive time sink. I've looked into OCR solutions, but they're really unreliable and cumbersome. Is there a smarter, more efficient way to extract data from this locked-down machine?
5 Answers
Remember, there’s a reason that machine is air-gapped. Sometimes you've just got to suck it up and print in a font that's good for OCR like OCR-B. It's built into Microsoft Office, so you might already have it!
You might want to revisit the OCR process but try printing your text using a clearer, more OCR-friendly font. I know it's a hassle, but back when PGP was being created, they used published books as a workaround for export restrictions. If you can create a printed document that’s easier to read for the OCR software, it might save you some headaches!
Could you clarify what you mean by 'a lot'? If you can somehow get a phone in, display the largest possible QR code on your screen and scan it with your phone. It could work way better than trying to OCR the text.
My tables usually have about 50 rows and 3 to 5 columns and I have to deal with several pages of this stuff. Can one QR code even handle that much data? Would I be able to create an encoder in just Notepad?
One idea could be to use a USB serial port connected to another machine via a serial cable. You could run a terminal emulator on the other machine to capture the printed information to a file. If your printer uses a parallel port, maybe an old LapLink cable could help you out too!
That's not possible. Any connections outside of the printer are immediately flagged, and the machines get banned from the network. The only connections available are to the screen and that specific printer.
If you can't install any software, consider using a binary code method to transfer data through the printer. You could also set up a camera to capture screenshots directly from the monitor, as a workaround. But your best bet might be to approach security about allowing you to transfer data under their supervision.
Unfortunately, installing anything isn't an option. The government tightly regulates this system, and while they keep asking for reports based on that data, we’re stuck doing it manually because there’s no extra software available.
You could also take screenshots and then use an OCR app on another machine. I’ve had success with older documents that way.
That's a cool idea! I was thinking of using something like QR codes for encoding info. If I could just get a simple encoding set up in JavaScript, I could blink out symbols and grab the data on my phone. It shouldn't be impossible!