Qubes PDF Converter

Qubes PDF Converter is a Qubes OS application that uses DisposableVMs and Qubes' flexible qrexec (inter-VM communication) infrastructure to securely convert untrusted PDF files into safe-to-view PDF files.

This is done by using a DisposableVM to render each page of a PDF file into a very simple representation (RGB bitmap) that (presumably) leaves no room for malicious code. This representation is then sent back to the client qube which then constructs an entirely new PDF file out of the received bitmaps.

For more details, please see the article in which this concept was originally introduced:

http://blog.invisiblethings.org/2013/02/21/converting-untrusted-pdfs-into-trusted.html

Usage

[user@domU ~]$ qvm-convert-pdf file1.pdf file2.pdf file3.pdf
:: Sending files to Disposable VMs...

 file1.pdf...done
 file2.pdf...fail
 file3.pdf...done

Total Sanitized Files: 2/3

The generic qvm-convert-file command also supports LibreOffice-backed document, spreadsheet, and presentation conversion for DOCX, ODT, XLSX, ODS, PPTX, and ODP files. Those formats require LibreOffice to be installed in the relevant template. It also supports common video formats by re-encoding them to .trusted.ogv with FFmpeg, when FFmpeg is installed in the relevant template. Video data crosses the qrexec boundary as raw RGB frames; audio is not preserved.

Authors

Original idea and implementation by Joanna Rutkowska. This application was subsequently incorporated into Qubes OS, and multiple other developers have contributed various fixes and improvements (see the commit log for details).