Dangerzone: Secure PDFs, Office documents or images

Dangerzone for Linux, Mac or Windows. Finally being able to open PDFs, Office documents and images from unsafe sources with a clear conscience.

With Dangerzone we can finally open PDFs, Office documents or even images from unsafe sources with a clear conscience. Developed by Micah Lee at First Look Media, Dangerzone is now a project of the Freedom of the Press Foundation.

Nearly anywhere are there more dangers lurking than in PDFs or Office documents. Because of course, one cannot (and should) not always go to the source 100 % trust. Dangerzone works on Linux, Mac and Windows machines and is modeled after the popular Qubes OS.

Micah Lee: Inspired by Qubes TrustedPDF

Before we look together how to install Dangerzone, it’s important to understand how it works. Developer Micah Lee uses an idea he copied from Qubes TrustedPDF.

Qubes-OS doesn’t have it in vain the reputation of being one of the safest operating systems. But sure. Not everyone can or wants to install Qubes as an operating system. The idea that documents can be opened and edited in a secure environment is brilliant.

When launching containers, Dangerzone disables the network and the only file that gets mounted is the suspicious document itself. So if a malicious document breaks the container hacks, it won’t have access to your data and won’t be able to use the internet, so it can’t do much harm.

Micah Lee

Dangerzone uses Linux containers to open the various documents in a secure environment (sandbox). In contrast to TrustedPDF, the program does not only work with PDFs. Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is also used to provide the document with a searchable text layer.

Compatibility and requirements