PDF Dissector 1.4.0 released

PDF Dissector 1.4.0 (Product site / Manual) fixes a few PDF parser bugs, improves the Adobe Reader emulation, and adds a cool new feature you can use for searching through all open PDF files.

Here is the detailed list of changes:

  • Feature: Added a way to search through the content of all open files.
  • Feature: Annotation names are now correctly emulated.
  • Bugfix: Fixed a parser bug that led to missed data streams if there was a comment between an object and its stream.
  • Bugfix: Fixed a parser bug that led to crashes when parsing invalid octal numbers.
  • Bugfix: All tabs belonging to a file are now closed when closing the file.

In PDF Dissector 1.4.0 you will now find a text field above the PDF browser where you can enter text strings to search for. The search function searches through dictionary keys, dictionary values, strings, data streams and other elements of PDF files and displays only those elements that match the search string. This is very useful if you want to answer questions like ‘which PDF files of my collection use JavaScript’?

The screenshot below shows how I used the filter to search through about 50 PDF files for exactly those that use the OpenAction command to execute some code when the PDF file is opened.

The new filter function in PDF Dissector 1.4.0