PLEASE NOTE: iText 5 is EOL, and has been replaced by iText. Only security fixes will be added

Known Security Issues

com.itextpdf:itextpdf vulnerabilities

There are 2 CVEs that are often attributed to iText 5: CVE-2022-24196 and CVE-2022-24197. Both are false positives and do not apply to iText 5; they are reported due to an incorrect artifact regex in some CVE databases.

org.apache.santuario:xmlsec vulnerabilities

The iText 5 targets Java 5 which means that we can not update org.apache.santuario:xmlsec version to 2.x.x or newer as it requires Java 8. If you are not using the com.itextpdf.text.pdf.security.MakeXmlSignature class then you can avoid adding org.apache.santuario:xmlsec dependency into your project. Which means that you would not be affected by the related vulnerabilities, for example https://snyk.io/vuln/SNYK-JAVA-ORGAPACHESANTUARIO-1655558. If you are using com.itextpdf.text.pdf.security.MakeXmlSignature class, for example for XFA signatures, then you can:

• either use org.apache.santuario:xmlsec 1.5.8 as a dependency which is affected by the vulnerability specified above, but works on Java 5+;
• or use org.apache.santuario:xmlsec 2.1.7 or newer. But this would require java 8+ and affects on the output format (see https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/SANTUARIO-494).

commons-io:commons-io vulnerabilities

The Java 5-compatible modules in iText 5 use a commons-io:commons-io version that is vulnerable (for example, CVE-2021-29425). Because these modules target Java 5, they cannot upgrade commons-io:commons-io to 2.7 or newer (which requires Java 8).

If you are using Java 8 or higher, specify direct dependency to the latest commons-io:commons-io version to mitigate CVEs, used version in iText is compatible with latest releases of commons-io.

We HIGHLY recommend customers use iText 9 for new projects, and to consider moving existing projects from iText 5 to iText 9 to benefit from the many improvements such as:

• HTML to PDF (PDF/UA) conversion
• Wider PDF standards support f.e. PDF/A-4, PDF/UA-2, WTPDF etc.
• PDF Redaction
• SVG support
• Better language support: Indic, Thai, Khmer, Arabic, Hebrew. (Close-source addon)
• PDF Debugging for your IDE
• Data Extraction
• Better continued support and bugfixes
• More modular, extensible handling of your document workflow
• Extra practical add-ons
• Encryption, hashing & digital signatures

iText 5 consists of several jars.

The main release contains:

• itextpdf-x.y.z.jar: the core library
• itext-xtra-x.y.z.jar: extra functionality (PDF 2!)
• itext-pdfa-x.y.z.jar: PDF/A-related functionality
• xmlworker-x.y.z.jar: XML (and HTML) functionality

iText 5 is hosted on https://github.com/itext/itextpdf

You can find the latest releases here:

• http://github.com/itext/itextpdf/releases/latest

You can also build iText 5 from source.

We also have RUPS — a tool that can help you debug PDFs. It's hosted on http://github.com/itext/rups

iText is licensed as AGPL software.

AGPL is a free / open source software license.

This doesn't mean the software is gratis!

Buying a license is mandatory as soon as you develop commercial activities distributing the iText software inside your product or deploying it on a network without disclosing the source code of your own applications under the AGPL license. These activities include:

• offering paid services to customers as an ASP
• serving PDFs on the fly in the cloud or in a web application
• shipping iText with a closed source product

Contact sales for more info: http://itextpdf.com/sales