ColdFusion IceBreaker #7 : Unprotect your protected PDF through CF

Protecting your PDF with a password is a common everyday use case .
Using ColdFusion this can be done in a single easy step.

But sometimes we need to programmatically de-crypt/un-protect the same PDF.
There can be various ways of accomplishing this feat,but again ColdFusion makes it easy and a single step process

The trick to get to the treat ( the un-protected pdf , in this case ) is to use cfpdf tag and set your encyption to none using the "encrypt" attribute. You can do so only if you have the owner password , as technically only the document owner should have the permissions to change the security settings of a document

So assuming your PDF is called MyPdf.pdf with a owner password of "changesettings",use the below mentioned code to remove password protection from your PDF

<cfpdf action="protect" source="MyPdf.pdf" destination="MyUnsafePdf.pdf" 
 password="changesettings" encrypt="none" />  
 

Open MyUnsafePdf.pdf and you have your pdf without password protection

Convert your pfx keystore to jks keystore

Many times we need to convert our PKCS12 keystore/digital signature/digital id file to JKS files.

There are various many ways of doing it . Most blogs talk about how OpenSSL would help you do it and other go on about new tools.But its all within java keytool's capabilities.

Its actually as simple as what I quote below.

Goto your <JAVA_HOME>/jre/bin

keytool -importkeystore -srckeystore MyPfx.pfx -srcstoretype pkcs12 -srcstorepass mysrcpassword  -destkeystore exportfrompfx.jks -deststoretype jks -deststorepass mydestpassword

This process will create a new jks file and call it exportfrompfx.jks

All the certificates with their aliases will be exported from MyPfx.pfx to exportfrompfx.jks

Use the following command then to verify your new keystore:

keytool -list -storetype jks -keystore exportfrompfx.jks -v

To selectively add each certificate use its alias.

Get the alias using the above mentioned list command

keytool -list -storetype jks -keystore exportfrompfx.jks -v

Use keytool to import that alias into your JKS keystore

keytool -importkeystore -srckeystore MyPfx.pfx -srcstoretype pkcs12 -srcstorepass mysrcpassword -srcalias alias -destkeystore exportfrompfx.jks -deststoretype jks -deststorepass mydestpassword -destalias destalias