Re: Arrrggghhh...Changing a secured PDF

[Sandy Harris <sandy -at- storm -dot- ca>]

Ruth Lundquist wrote:
> 
> I have a PDF file from another entity that has been encrypted. ...
>
> I have tried everything--printing a page range, saving as another file,
> deleting the page--but I don't have access to these neat features because
> of the security!!! Arrrggghhh.
> 
> Does anyone know how I can delete this &*%$#!! useless page from the PDF
> file?
> 
> (And no, I don't have access to the source document or the author, which is
> probably a good thing considering I'm feeling a tad homicidal right now.)

If you're willing to pay for the service, some places to try are:

http://www.crackpassword.com/
http://www.elcomsoft.com/prs.html
http://www.ashishsystems.com/pages/products.htm
http://www.lostpassword.com/

These companies will, for a fee, break passwords for:

	most MS-Office components (Word, Excel, Access, ...)
	Zip, Visio, Outlook, ...
	NT or 2000 user passwords
	Quicken, Quickbooks
	Acrobat
	some Lotus, Borland, Corel, Symantec products

There is also quite a bit of free software around for doing similar
things, but perhaps not for as broad a range of targets. Example:

http://www.password-crackers.com/crack.html

What I find scary about this is not that the cracking services are so
readily available but that major companies ship such defective products.

If you see any product that includes encryption that is:

either   sold by a company whose primary business is not security
or	 written by people who have not been trained in the field

then the odds are that the product is utter rubbish, and will be
quickly broken by the first professional that tries.

For some reasons for this, see Schneier's "Why Cryptography is
Harder than it Looks" paper:
http://www.counterpane.com/whycrypto.html

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

*** Deva(tm) Tools for Dreamweaver and Deva(tm) Search ***
Build Contents, Indexes, and Search for Web Sites and Help Systems
Available now at http://www.devahelp.com or info -at- devahelp -dot- com

TECH*COMM 2001 Conference, July 15-18 in Washington, DC
The Help Technology Conference, August 21-24 in Boston, MA
Details and online registration at http://www.SolutionsEvents.com


---
You are currently subscribed to techwr-l as: archive -at- raycomm -dot- com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-techwr-l-obscured -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
Send administrative questions to ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com -dot-  Visit 
http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.