iTextSharp - How to get PDF content for signing an

Question

I'm developing a client-server application where clients have to sign PDF documents using their signatures and upload them to the server. The task is complicated by the fact that clients don't have the means to embed signatures into PDFs, they can only read raw bytes and produce the signature in the form of raw bytes.

I'm trying to implement the following workflow:

1. The client uploads the unsigned PDF to the server
2. The server opens the PDF, extracts the bytes that the client needs to sign, and sends those bytes back
3. The client receives these bytes, signs them using a client certificate and sends the signature to the server
4. The server embeds the received signature into the PDF it received earlier.

I found some code samples of extracting bytes to sign and embedding the signature bytes into the PDF (this is the main sample I'm using).

The problem is that this sample performs all the steps in one program, it embeds the signature right after getting the document hash without closing PdfStamper. What I need is some way to save the document after adding the signature field and getting sha.Hash, and then at some later time (when the server receives the computed signature) open the document and embed the signature value into the PDF.

Can you suggest a way to modify this code so that the steps (2) and (4) can be independent, and not require shared instances of PdfReader and PdfStamper?

Answer 1

The answer below was taken from our white paper on digital signatures, chapter 4, section 4.3.3 Signing a document on the server using a signature created on the client. Code examples here

The desired workflow can be seen as 3 major steps:

1. Presign:
   Required: pdf, certificate chain
   Serverside, setup signature infrastructure, extract message digest and send the digest to client as a byte-array

2. Signing:
   Required: message digest as byte-array, private key
   Clientside, apply cryptographic algorithms to message digest to generate the signed digest from the hash and send this signature to the server

3. Postsign: Required: signed digest as byte-array, pdf Serverside insert the signed digest into the prepared signature, insert the signature into the pdf-document

Code examples, iText5 and C#:

Presign (server)

//hello : 
//location of the pdf on the server
//or
//bytestream variable with teh pdf loaded in
//chain: certificate chain
// we create a reader and a stamper
PdfReader reader = new PdfReader(hello);
Stream baos = new MemoryStream();
PdfStamper stamper = PdfStamper.CreateSignature(reader,  baos., '\0');
// we create the signature appearance
PdfSignatureAppearance sap = stamper.SignatureAppearance;
sap.Reason = "Test";
sap.Location = "On a server!";
sap.SetVisibleSignature ( new Rectangle(36, 748, 144, 780), 1, "sig");
sap.Certificate = chain[0];
// we create the signature infrastructure
PdfSignature dic = new PdfSignature(
PdfName.ADOBE_PPKLITE, PdfName.ADBE_PKCS7_DETACHED);
dic.Reason = sap.Reason;
dic.Location = sap.Location;
dic.Contact = sap.Contact;
dic.Date = new PdfDate(sap.SignDate);
sap.CryptoDictionary = dic;
Dictionary<PdfName, int> exc = new Dictionary<PdfName, int>();
exc.Add(PdfName.CONTENTS, (int)(8192 * 2 + 2));
sap.PreClose(exc);
PdfPKCS7 sgn = new PdfPKCS7(null, chain, "SHA256", false);
//Extract the bytes that need to be signed
Stream data = sap.GetRangeStream();
byte[] hash = DigestAlgorithms.Digest(data,"SHA256");
byte[] sh = sgn.getAuthenticatedAttributeBytes(hash,null, null, CryptoStandard.CMS);
//Store sgn, hash,sap and baos on the server
//...
//Send sh to client

Signing (client)

// we receive a hash that needs to be signed
Stream istream = response.GetResponseStream();
MemoryStream baos = new MemoryStream();
data = new byte[0x100];
while ((read = istream.Read(data, 0, data.Length)) != 0)  
    baos.Write(data, 0, read);  
istream.Close();
byte[] hash = baos.ToArray();

// we load our private key from the key store
Pkcs12Store store = new Pkcs12Store(new FileStream(KEYSTORE, FileMode.Open), PASSWORD);
String alias = "";
// searching for private key
foreach (string al in store.Aliases)
    if (store.IsKeyEntry(al) && store.GetKey(al).Key.IsPrivate) {
        alias = al;
        break;
    }
AsymmetricKeyEntry pk = store.GetKey(alias);

// we sign the hash received from the server
ISigner sig = SignerUtilities.GetSigner("SHA256withRSA");
sig.Init(true, pk.Key);
sig.BlockUpdate(hash, 0, hash.Length);
data = sig.GenerateSignature();

// we make a connection to the PostSign Servlet
request = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(POST);
request.Headers.Add(HttpRequestHeader.Cookie,cookies.Split(";".ToCharArray(), 2)[0]);
request.Method = "POST";
// we upload the signed bytes
os = request.GetRequestStream();
os.Write(data, 0, data.Length);
os.Flush();
os.Close();

Postsign (server)

// we read the signed bytes
MemoryStream baos = new MemoryStream();
Stream InputStream iStream = req.GetInputStream();
int read;
byte[] data = new byte[256];
while ((read = iStream.read(data, 0, data.Length)) != -1) {
    baos.Write(data, 0, read);
}
// we complete the PDF signing process
sgn.SetExternalDigest(baos.ToArray(), null, "RSA");
byte[] encodedSig = sgn.getEncodedPKCS7(hash, cal, null,
null, null, CryptoStandard.CMS);
byte[] paddedSig = new byte[8192];
paddedSig.
encodedSig.CopyTo(paddedSig, 0);
PdfDictionary dic2 = new PdfDictionary();
dic2.Put(PdfName.CONTENTS, new PdfString(paddedSig).SetHexWriting(true));
try
{
    sap.close(dic2);
}
catch (DocumentException e)
{
    throw new IOException(e);
}

I've omitted most of the client-server communication code and focused on the signing logic. I've also not thoroughly tested these snippets, as I had to convert them from java code and I don't currently have a client-server setup to test them with, so copy and run at your own risk.

Answer 2

Figured it out myself. This piece of code pointed me to the right direction.

Turns out the process on the server has to be the following:

• Take the unsigned PDF and add an empty signature field
• Compute the bytes that need to be signed based on the modified content of the file
• Save the modified PDF with an empty signature into a temporary file
• Send the computed bytes to the client
• When the client responds with the signature, open the temporary file and insert the signature into the field created earlier

The relevant server code:

public static byte[] GetBytesToSign(string unsignedPdf, string tempPdf, string signatureFieldName)
{
    using (PdfReader reader = new PdfReader(unsignedPdf))
    {
        using (FileStream os = File.OpenWrite(tempPdf))
        {
            PdfStamper stamper = PdfStamper.CreateSignature(reader, os, '\0');
            PdfSignatureAppearance appearance = stamper.SignatureAppearance;
            appearance.SetVisibleSignature(new Rectangle(36, 748, 144, 780), 1, signatureFieldName);
            IExternalSignatureContainer external = new ExternalBlankSignatureContainer(PdfName.ADOBE_PPKMS, PdfName.ADBE_PKCS7_SHA1);
            MakeSignature.SignExternalContainer(appearance, external, 8192);

            return SHA1Managed.Create().ComputeHash(appearance.GetRangeStream());
        }
    }
}
public static void EmbedSignature(string tempPdf, string signedPdf, string signatureFieldName, byte[] signedBytes)
{
    using (PdfReader reader = new PdfReader(tempPdf))
    {
        using (FileStream os = File.OpenWrite(signedPdf))
        {
            IExternalSignatureContainer external = new MyExternalSignatureContainer(signedBytes);
            MakeSignature.SignDeferred(reader, signatureFieldName, os, external);
        }
    }
}

private class MyExternalSignatureContainer : IExternalSignatureContainer
{
    private readonly byte[] signedBytes;

    public MyExternalSignatureContainer(byte[] signedBytes)
    {
        this.signedBytes = signedBytes;
    }

    public byte[] Sign(Stream data)
    {
        return signedBytes;
    }

    public void ModifySigningDictionary(PdfDictionary signDic)
    {
    }
}

Side note: what bothers me in all those iText samples is the presence of magic numbers (like 8192 here) without any comments. This makes using this library so much more difficult and annoying than it could be.