Comments on: How-to on securing PDF documents http://www.infosecpodcast.com/2009/12/how-to-on-securing-pdf-documents/ Information Security related news, opinions and ramblings Sun, 25 Jul 2010 08:44:08 -0600 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 By: Andrew Yeomans http://www.infosecpodcast.com/2009/12/how-to-on-securing-pdf-documents/comment-page-1/#comment-28816 Andrew Yeomans Sun, 25 Jul 2010 08:44:08 +0000 http://www.infosecpodcast.com/?p=205#comment-28816 Fully securing PDFs is a bit harder than that. Those instructions only stop someone editing the document with *Adobe* software. But there are freely available alternatives that don't honour Adobe's "no edit" honesty bit. Any software that lets you view the document (with read password if necessary) has the potential ability to make a copy that can be edited. The certification options should be OK. It should be a simple matter of programming to create a wrapper for Acrobat Reader, bound to your email client's "PDF" handler, probably using such alternatives to check the certificate. Fully securing PDFs is a bit harder than that. Those instructions only stop someone editing the document with *Adobe* software. But there are freely available alternatives that don’t honour Adobe’s “no edit” honesty bit. Any software that lets you view the document (with read password if necessary) has the potential ability to make a copy that can be edited.

The certification options should be OK. It should be a simple matter of programming to create a wrapper for Acrobat Reader, bound to your email client’s “PDF” handler, probably using such alternatives to check the certificate.

]]>