This 8.0.2 release of iText Suite includes a ton of neat stuff, with Core support for PDF/A-4 creation, improved digital signing, and simple yet customizable annotation flattening. There's also updates to pdfHTML's advanced multicolumn support and flex containers, better font selection, and much more!
In May 2021, a group of researchers at the Ruhr University Bochum (RUB) published an IEEE symposium paper on problems with certification signatures in PDF. The authors’ findings are summarized on the PDF Insecurity website. Since iText’s products are often used as part of digital signing workflows (including to create certification signatures), we felt compelled to comment. In this blog post, we’ll take you through some background on these new attacks, and explain what you can do about them.
We have used iText for over 7 years in the DocuSign flagship product, our eSignature services. We use it with the purpose of extracting text, applying watermarks, and performing other general purpose PDF functions. We use iText to provide high availability and a reliable service to our customers and their documents.
The ability to apply and validate secure PDF digital signatures has long been a particular strength of the open-source iText Core library. We’ve kept pace with advances such as support for PAdES and PDF 2.0, and so we’re proud to present a guest blog detailing iText 8’s support for the latest ISO extension standards for digital signing.
