Execute Bash Script within a PDF File

Question

I recently discovered that concatenating text to the end of a PDF file does not change properties of the PDF file. This may be a very silly question, but if a program were concatenated to the PDF file, could it somehow be executed?

For example, opening this PDF file would create a text file in the home directory with the words "hello world" in it.

*pdf contents*...
trailer^M
<</Size 219/Root 186 0 R/Info 177 0     R/ID[<5990BFFB4DF3DB26CE6A92829BB5C41B>    <B35E036CA0E7BA4CBF39B3D74DCE4CAF>]/Prev 4494028 >>^M
startxref^M
4663747^M
%%EOF^M
#!/bin/bash
echo "hello world" > ~/hello.txt

Would this work with a different file format? Does the embedded code need to be a binary executable?

You could use this to make a PDF file also valid in a **footer**-based format, like ZIP, but not a header-based format, like... well, basically all your executable formats, scripting or otherwise. A shebang, like other headers, will only be recognized at the top of a file. — Charles Duffy, May 22 '16 at 18:10
In general, though, a "is this design decision exploitable?" question is probably a better fit for http://security.stackexchange.com/ than SO. — Charles Duffy, May 22 '16 at 18:12

score 2 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:16

As (fortunately), that's not part of the standard, you can't do that.

Unfortunately, the standard supports "launch actions", to execute arbitrary code with user confirmation. Those are now disabled by default and don't allow to execute embedded bulbs, but if enabled you could use that to execute arbitrary code that finds and executes the code embedded on the pdf.

The standard also supports javascript that excecutes sandboxed, but it a reader specific bug that allows may escaping the sandbox.

Execute Bash Script within a PDF File

1 Answers1