PDFBox returns isEncrypted true even if i can open file

Question

I am using PDFBox to determine pdf file is password protected or not. this is my code:

boolean isProtected = pdfDocument.isEncrypted();

My file properties is in sceenshot. Here i am getting isProtected= true even i can open it without password.

Note: this file has Document Open password : No and permission password : Yes.

@Tilman in his answer correctly described the situation you are in. But is that what you wanted? Your "question" misses an actual question. — mkl, Sep 19 '16 at 13:08

Tilman Hausherr · Accepted Answer · 2016-09-19T13:30:50.363

5

Your PDF has an empty user password and a non empty owner password. And yes, it is encrypted. This is being done to prevent people to do certain things, e.g. content copying.

It isn't a real security; it is the responsibility of the viewer software to take care that the "forbidden" operations aren't allowed.

You can find a longer (and a bit amusing) explanation here.

To see the document access permissions, use PDDocument.getCurrentAccessPermission().

In 2.0.*, a user will be able to view a file if this call succeeds:

PDDocument doc = PDDocument.load(file);

If a InvalidPasswordException is thrown, then it means a non empty password is required.

edited Sep 19 '16 at 13:30

answered Sep 19 '16 at 11:44

Tilman Hausherr

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Thanks for replay, I want true if user can view pdf without password and false if user can not open pdf file without password.Can u plz help me here. In my above scenario user can open/view pdf file without password then it should return true. – Nitin Sep 19 '16 at 13:12
In 2.0.* if you can open the file with PDDocument.load(File), then it means a user can view it. – Tilman Hausherr Sep 19 '16 at 13:28
Hello,I am ready to migrate pdfbox to 2.0.2. What is equivalent method of pDFTextStripper.resetEngine() in pdfbox 2.0.2 – Nitin Sep 20 '16 at 05:33
@NitinVavdiya there isn't (its private). You don't need it. – Tilman Hausherr Sep 21 '16 at 08:55

Tim Biegeleisen · Answer 2 · 2019-02-20T09:12:16.997

I am posting this answer because elsewhere on Stack Overflow and the web you might see the suggested way to check for a password protected PDF in PDFBox is to use PDDocument#isEncrypted(). The problem we found with this is that certain PDFs which did not prompt for a password were still being flagged as encrypted. See the accepted answer for one explanation of why this is happening, but in any case we used the followed pattern as a workaround:

boolean isPDFReadable(byte[] fileContent) {
    PDDocument doc = null;
    try {
        doc = PDDocument.load(fileContent);
        doc.getPages();  // perhaps not necessary
        return true;
    }
    catch (InvalidPasswordException invalidPasswordException) {
        LOGGER.error("Unable to read password protected PDF.", invalidPasswordException);
    }
    catch (IOException io) {
        LOGGER.error("An error occurred while reading a PDF attachment during account submission.", io);
    }
    finally {
        if (!Objects.isNull(doc)) {
            try {
                doc.close();
                return true;
            }
            catch (IOException io) {
                LOGGER.error("An error occurred while closing a PDF attachment ", io);
            }
        }
    }

    return false;
}

If the call to PDDocument#getPages() succeeds, then it also should mean that opening the PDF via double click or browser, without a password, should be possible.

According to the accepted answer (and also to a quick&dirty code review) already the successful `PDDocument.load(fileContent)` operation suffices, no need to retrieve the pages. — mkl, Feb 20 '19 at 09:11
@mkl I added a comment to your point. In any case, the accepted answer is basically lacking in implementation, which my answer provides. — Tim Biegeleisen, Feb 20 '19 at 09:12

PDFBox returns isEncrypted true even if i can open file

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