pdfdigital-signaturepades

PDF signature ignored by Acrobat but visible in other validation tools


We're making a webapp whose one of the functionalities is to make PaDES signature. The code is too big to share here, but here is how the workflow looks like:

The solution is working good, for most of the PDF files. However, there are some files in which Acrobat doesn't display the signature as if it doesn't exist, but when trying to do the verification with our webapp (which uses DSS in the backend for verification) everything is displayed fine. It is also displayed fine when checking it with the DSS online verification tool.

Here are the most relevant parts of the signed PDF:

    1 0 obj
        <</AcroForm<</Fields[1057 0 R] /SigFlags 3>>/Type /Catalog /Pages 3 0 R
        /Dests 8 0 R
        /Metadata 1056 0 R
        >>
        .
        .
        .
        1057 0 obj
        <<
        /FT /Sig
        /Type /Annot
        /Subtype /Widget
        /F 132
        /T (Signature1057)
        /V 1059 0 R
        /P 3 0 R
        /Rect [335.17360432942706 796.500010172526 535.173604329427 746.500010172526]
        /AP <<
        /N 1060 0 R
        >>
        >>
        endobj
    .
    .
    .
        
        1059 0 obj
        <<
        /Type/Sig
        /Filter/Adobe.PPKLite
        /SubFilter/ETSI.CAdES.detached
        /Name (Name)
        /ContactInfo ()
        /Location (Location)
        /Reason ()
        /M (D:20200813165733+02'00')
        /Contents 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        /ByteRange [0000000000 0000220234 0000236618 0000022770]>>
            endobj
        .
        .
        .
        trailer <<
          /Size 1064
          /Root 1 0 R
          /Info 2 0 R
          /ID [<a48978cd2c166094b3e771ab606ea301><531ccc430c71ee517274ec4d5f6e2c34>]
        >>

Everything seems fine, but for some reason Acrobat is ignoring the signature. Here's the whole file if you'd like to take a look: https://easyupload.io/2lrfg8


Solution

  • There are multiple errors in the signed PDF.

    If one fixes these issues by

    Adobe Reader displays the signature; obviously as invalid, though, after all those repairs changed the file:

    screen shot

    Thus,

    Everything seems fine, but for some reason Acrobat is ignoring the signature.

    as explained above there are many errors in the file, so Adobe Acrobat cannot be blamed for not showing your signature. So it's actually the other way around, any signature validation software that ignores that many errors and then still validates the signature without any warning, is buggy. Such errors might cause the file to display differently on different viewers, so the trustworthiness of the signature is limited. This could actually be used as another attack vector on PDF signature validation.

    (Be aware, the errors mentioned above probably are not the only ones, merely those I stumbled over when analyzing the issue at hand.)