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Security Issues Found In PDF Encryption Methods By PDFex Researchers

Calendar Oct 03, 2019 • User Avatar Anthony Pell
1 min read
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Topics Covered

security issues attack methods document security encryption flaws pdf encryption

You would be forgiven for thinking that encrypting PDFs, before they are stored or sent via email, keeps their contents away from prying eyes. But according to researchers in Germany, it might be time to revisit that assumption after they discovered weaknesses in PDF encryption which could be exploited to reveal the contents of a file to an attacker. Learn more:

Dubbed ‘PDFex’ (PDF exfiltration), the weaknesses documented inPractical Decryption exFiltration: Breaking PDF Encryptionby researchers from Ruhr University Bochum and the Münster University of Applied Sciences, offer two attack methods, each with three variants that depend on which PDF viewer is used to open a target document.

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