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Subject:Re: How secure are passworded PDFs From:Andrew Plato <gilliankitty -at- yahoo -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Wed, 26 Feb 2003 13:02:05 -0800 (PST)
"John Posada" <> wrote
> Hi, guys...my boss is making sounds about having me be the caretaker of the
> password dictionary.
> So, if I was to make it an ebook and PW it, is it secure under normal
> conditions? (I accept that nothing is secure under abnormal conditions)
As others pointed out PDFs are very crackable. Also, files on your local PC are
never secured, unless you have something other than just plain old Windows
ACLs. Public folders on an Exchange server are better than nothing, but they
too can be hacked. And firewalls - don't count on them being secure.
I would recommend encrypting this file using PGP. Have the necessary developers
obtain PGP, generate a public key, and then encrypt the file using their public
keys. Then, only those people with the matching Private keys could decrypt it.
Thus, even if somebody stole a developer's Windows password, they would also
have to steal their private key. Two-factor authentication.
You can obtain a great, open source, PGP program for Windows called WinPT. Its
a little clumsy to learn, but once you get the basics down, it pretty easy.
Checkout winpt.org.
Andrew Plato
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