Title: PDF bruteforce tool to recover locked files | |
Author: Solène | |
Date: 09 March 2025 | |
Tags: security | |
Description: In this blog post, you will learn about pdfrip, a tool | |
that could be used to recover the password of a locked PDF file you | |
forgot | |
# Introduction | |
Today, I had to open a password protected PDF (medical report), | |
unfortunately it is a few years old document and I did not remember the | |
password format (usually something based on named and birthdate -_-). | |
I found a nice tool that can try a lot of combinations, and it is even | |
better as if you know a bit the password format you can easily generate | |
tested patterns. | |
pdfrip GitHub page | |
# Usage | |
The project page offers binaries for some operating systems, but you | |
can compile it using cargo. | |
The documentation on the project's README is quite clear and easy to | |
understand. It is possible to generate some simple patterns, try all | |
combinations of random characters or use a dictionary (some tools | |
exists to generate a dictionary). | |
Inside a virtual machine with 4 vCPU, I was able to achieve 36 000 | |
checks per second, on baremetal I expect this to be a higher. |