Re: FLOSS support for signed PDFs

On Mon, 01 Oct 2007 12:49:13 -0500
John Hasler <jhasler@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I wrote:
How are they doing this detection [of Acroread]?

Celejar writes:
I don't know.

I suggest you concentrate your efforts on finding out (and publish your
results, of course). Once you can spoof their detection method you can get
them to send you the files which you should be able to read despite the
signature. Verifying the signature can come later.

I installed the linux tarball (as a non-priveleged user, and to a
non-standard location under $HOME, to minimize pollution), and dropped
the plugin (nppdf.so) into $HOME/.mozilla/plugins (I'm using IW), which
was enough for the website to accept my system as having Acrobat
installed. I assume it was the plugin that did it, since I doubt there
were any heuristics that could have found the files I installed under
$HOME/some_location.

Oddly enough, when I try to download PDFs from the institution's site,
the plugin doesn't pick them up, although IW recognizes them as "PDF
documents", and "about:plugins" shows Acrobat as being installed. [IW
only offers to open the PDFs with the default app (Evince) or to save
them to disk].

pdfinfo gives:

Producer: iText by lowagie.com (r1.02b;p128)
CreationDate: Tue Oct 2 11:39:33 2007
ModDate: Tue Oct 2 11:39:33 2007
Tagged: no
Pages: 4
Encrypted: no
Page size: 612 x 792 pts (letter)
File size: 774826 bytes
Optimized: no
PDF version: 1.4

I haven't yet tried to open a downloaded PDF in Acrobat since I'm
reluctant to agree to the EULA.

John Hasler

Celejar
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