@unabandoned/pdf-signature-reader

Verify the digital signature of a PDF.

A maintained fork of yudayahya/pdf-signature-reader, which has had no commit or release since April 2024. Published as @unabandoned/pdf-signature-reader; the API is unchanged from upstream. Upstream vendored a copy of [email protected] into the package, where no dependency update could reach it — this fork uses the platform's buffer module instead: Node's native Buffer, or in a browser the shim your bundler provides for buffer. It has no runtime dependency beyond node-forge.

The signed PDF file has the public certificate embedded in it, so all we need to verify a PDF file is the file itself.

Installation

npm i @unabandoned/pdf-signature-reader

Importing

// CommonJS require
const verifyPDF = require('@unabandoned/pdf-signature-reader');

// ES6 imports
import verifyPDF from '@unabandoned/pdf-signature-reader';

Verifying

Verify the digital signature of the pdf and extract the certificates details

Node.js

const verifyPDF = require('@unabandoned/pdf-signature-reader');
const signedPdfBuffer = fs.readFileSync('yourPdf');

const {
    verified,
    authenticity,
    integrity,
    expired,
    signatures
} = verifyPDF(signedPdfBuffer);

Browser

The package does require('buffer'). browserify and webpack 4 substitute a browser shim automatically; with Vite or webpack 5, alias buffer to a shim such as @unabandoned/buffer (resolve.alias / resolve.fallback).

import verifyPDF from '@unabandoned/pdf-signature-reader';

const readFile = (e) => {
    const file = e.target.files[0]
    let reader = new FileReader();
    reader.onload = function(e) {
        const { verified } = verifyPDF(reader.result);
    }
    reader.readAsArrayBuffer(file);
};

• signedPdfBuffer: signed PDF as buffer.
• verified: The overall status of verification process.
• authenticity: Indicates if the validity of the certificate chain and the root CA (overall in case of multiple signatures).
• integrity: Indicates if the pdf has been tampered with or not (overall in case of multiple signatures).
• expired: Indicates if any of the certificates has expired.
• signatures: Array that contains the certificate details and signatureMeta (Reason, ContactInfo, Location and Name) for each signature.

Certificates

You can get the details of the certificate chain by using the following api.

const { getCertificatesInfoFromPDF } = require('@unabandoned/pdf-signature-reader');  // require

import { getCertificatesInfoFromPDF } from '@unabandoned/pdf-signature-reader';  // ES6

const certs = getCertificatesInfoFromPDF(signedPdfBuffer);

• signedPdfBuffer: signed PDF as buffer.

• certs:

  • issuedBy: The issuer of the certificate.
  • issuedTo: The owner of the certificate.
  • validityPeriod: The start and end date of the certificate.
  • pemCertificate: Certificate in pem format.
  • clientCertificate: true for the client certificate.

Credits

• This incredible NPM Package by ninja-labs-tech.
• yudayahya/pdf-signature-reader, the direct upstream of this fork.