I have not been answering my mail

Basically life got in the way and I have not been answering my mail for months at a time. I tried to address some of the issues people were having with some of my posts (i.e. I made an addition to my PDF cracking post today to help answer some questions people had). So I’m not ignoring people I just haven’t had time.

However I’m back in the swing of things and I’m starting to answer my mail again. If I have not responded to you may be because

1. I have not gotten to your mail yet.
2. The mail was so old responding to the issue now would be pointless
3. I don’t respond to Idiotic questions or issues (read: no I don’t allow advertising on my blog and I probably never will)

Feel free to e-mail me again if I haven’t responded to your questions, I may have let it be because it was too old. Also, you never know, I may have accidentally deleted it while cleaning out spam. I don’t mind answering questions I just lose track of things. I ALWAYS ANSWER MY MAIL out of common courtesy even if it’s an I don’t know. Well, except if real life issues take hold of me, then there is nothing I can do. But starting now I’ll try to pick up the slack and start regularly answer back as before.

So feel free to start using the contact page again

How To Crack Password Protected PDF Documents Part 2

Before I continue I must state that this only works if you have permission to view the contents of the PDF but are unable to print it.. This post is an addition to How To Crack Password Protected PDF Documents. These two posts can be read in any order, they simply showcase different workarounds.

Ghostscipt and GSView are both free, opensource and legal. This method is a workaround don’t start calling it a hack.

1. Download and install Ghostscript.
2. Download and install GSView (GUI for Ghostscript).
3. Launch GSView
4. Open your PDF
5. Print

Download for Linux:

Ghostscript

Download for Windows:

Ghostscript

GSView for Linux/Windows

Note that Ghostscript for Windows is slightly behind the Linux version. If you want the latest bleeding edge you will have to compile the source code yourself.

If you wish to save the PDF you have to use pdfwrite (by going to file>Convert) to create a copy of it. However, pdfwrite does not always work correctly. It sometimes cuts the content off the page.

The more reliable way to copy it is to download a virtual print driver. Go to the options in Virtual Image Printer driver and select your output file type. It can output the PDF as BMP, PNG , JPG, TIFF or back to PDF.

Be aware that when you use any of these methods the PDFs will be larger then the original because the pages are all images. When you go to step 5 and click Print proceed to the drop down menu and select the new Virtual Print option.