PdfViewer VS dangerzone

There are some pdf readers that protect you against those things.

On Android, for example, there is the GrapheneOS Pdf Viewer [1]. It's readme has a pretty good explanation of how it works.

1: https://github.com/GrapheneOS/PdfViewer

Secure PDF Viewer. FOSS. The Simple Rick of PDF viewers. Reads PDFs and doesn't spy on you. At the time of this writing, printing PDFs with this app is a bit awkward. You have to use the "Share" button and then scroll down to the printer icon or "send to printer" icon to print the PDFs. MJ PDF Reader also belongs in this slot. FOSS. Printing PDFs is simpler and easier with this app.

I don't have experience with Qubes in order to know what the files do, but this repo references two files in a qubes directory: e.g. https://github.com/freedomofpress/dangerzone/blob/v0.6.0/qub...

start here: https://github.com/freedomofpress/dangerzone

i've never used it, but i've been meaning to check it out. at least it should give you a jumping off point for further investigation.

if that is insufficient, use proofpoint.

for archives that are tickling bugs, you have to use a similar technique. it's not enough to analyze them and send them on as-is. you have to unpack in a sandbox (which will be detectable, no 2 ways about it, but the question is will anyone expend enough effort to detect -- no, not for your use case, seeing as how you're asking the question at all), process with dangerzone or dangerzone-like tool, then re-archive it and let the user see only that new archive.

I've read about the concept of "trusted PDFs" [1] from Qubes OS and the Dangerzone project [2].

I noticed people saying they use such tools to open applicant attachments in the context of employee hiring processes.

Isn't it simpler to just open these untrusted files in a cloud service like Google Drive or Microsoft Office online?

[1] https://blog.invisiblethings.org/2013/02/21/converting-untrusted-pdfs-into-trusted.html

[2] https://github.com/freedomofpress/dangerzone

You can use something similar on macOS, Windows or Linux, based on Docker containers, see Dangerzone: https://github.com/freedomofpress/dangerzone

https://github.com/freedomofpress/dangerzone has been a great tool to use as an added layer of defense. Definitely check out this users other projects as you can tell by the users name that they are made for journalists.

This is exactly what DangerZone is built for. Takes ‘dangerous’ PDFs, converts them to images and back (via OCR) so there’s nothing potentially harmful inside. Does all the conversion inside docker containers so there’s little chance of a sandbox escape or network access

The source code for the CLI application is probably the best place to look for an example of how to use the internal parts of the code which perform the actual conversion: https://github.com/freedomofpress/dangerzone/blob/main/dangerzone/cli.py

Check out danger zone - https://github.com/freedomofpress/dangerzone