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Question

How "Sanitize Document" can be useful if you already has opened a document?

Forum|Forum|4 years ago
January 1, 2022
3 replies
1406 views

PDFs can contain malware. So it's dangerous to view some of them. Then there is such feature as "Sanitize Document", but to use it we should start with opening a potentially dangerous PDF. So how this function can protect if you have to open it first? Can't something malicious start to work before you run santitize function?

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Dave Creamer of IDEAS

Community Expert

You are conflating sandboxing with sanitizing.

Acrobat has a "sandboxing" feature to protect your system from malicious code.

Sanitizing is to remove any of YOUR potential private data or features you don't want to share. Here is a list of the hidden data that can remove:

https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/removing-sensitive-content-pdfs.html#remove_hidden_information_options

David Creamer: Community Expert (ACI and ACE 1995-2023)

try67

Community Expert

Not entirely correct. See my reply above.

T

Test Screen Name

Legend

The "Sanitize" feature is not designed to remove malware; I think this is a good guess based on the name, but it's not what it is for. It's to remove your personal info before sharing a file.

try67

Community Expert

That's not entirely accurate. This command will also remove links, actions and scripts from the file. Those have nothing to do with your personal info.

Here's the full list:

Thom Parker

Community Expert

Years ago there were several malicious PDF exploits that used memory overflow errors to get malware into Acrobat. None of these were ever real problems, and Adobe put in fixes real fast. I have not heard of any serious security issues in a long time. However, some of these exploits did use JavaScript to cause the memory issue, and since sanitize removes scripts, it does in fact offer protection from a potential security problem. Opening such a compromized PDF does not pose a threat if you just turn off JavaScript execution in the preferences.

Thom Parker - Software Developer at PDFScriptingUse the Acrobat JavaScript Reference early and often

try67

Community Expert

Not really. If something truly malicious is embedded in a PDF file (which is not a common thing at all, by the way), then it will likely escape the "sanitize document" command anyway, by being hidden deep inside the internals of the file.

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