Ross Johnson created PDFBOX-5955:
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             Summary: Support rare RC4 encryption where R=4, key length < 128 
bits
                 Key: PDFBOX-5955
                 URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/PDFBOX-5955
             Project: PDFBox
          Issue Type: Improvement
          Components: Crypto
            Reporter: Ross Johnson
         Attachments: R=4, V=4, 40-bit RC4.pdf, R=4, V=4, 48-bit RC4.pdf

I've come across some PDFs that open fine in Acrobat, but seemingly no other 
viewer / parser. Upon further inspection, it seems these PDFs use a rare RC4 
encryption scheme where R=4 & V=4, but the key length is given as 40 bits / 5 
bytes instead of the normally expected 128 bits / 16 bytes.

I can't find this behavior explicitly described in the PDF specs, but it seems 
that Acrobat extends the shorter key to 16 bytes (appending 0x00 bytes) in this 
situation before the steps described in "Algorithm 1: Encryption of data using 
the RC4 or AES algorithms".

I've been able to generate a sample file that demonstrates the issue and uses a 
40-bit key. I also made a similar file with a 48-bit key. Note that these files 
have an empty / blank user password, and Acrobat opens them without a password 
prompt.



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