There are many legitimate plug-ins on the market today that have this capability which are not hacking tools and were not developed for that purpose. Unfortunately, by it’s very nature it does just that.
That means any third party can write a perfectly valid and appropriate plug-in that extracts text from an open PDF document without it having been deliberately designed to break any security systems. If you examine the licensing system in force at the date if this article, anyone can write a plug-in for Adobe Acrobat Standard or Professional without obtaining an IKLA.A company may have an IKLA with Adobe Systems, but that does not mean that their product is certified as fit for purpose and is not vulnerable to weaknesses in the system or does not create weaknesses in the system.Unverified non-certified plug-ins can be removed from the plug-ins directory, and they will no longer load at startup.”
“Be careful not to install untrusted software, including non-certified Adobe plug-ins (those not signed and deployed by Adobe), unless absolutely certain of the origin and integrity of such software.
All third party plug-ins are restricted to non-certified mode.” The Certified Mode of both Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader is used to provide added assurances that only plug-ins provided by Adobe are compatible. The purpose of the Reader enabling plugin architecture and IKLA is for licensing only and does not imply suitability or endorsement by Adobe of third party plug-ins. An Adobe Reader plugin requires a license agreement and an enabling key from Adobe as part of the Adobe Reader Integration Key License Agreement (IKLA). “Developers can freely write plug-ins for Adobe Acrobat. We reproduce some of the text published in the CERT report: However, it is openly admitted that ‘legitimate’ plug-ins may compromize the security of a system. The highly respected CERT organization reported the following in respect of the Adobe system: But they are known to also create security holes.
In the PDF world it is commonplace to use plug-ins to provide extra functionality and features.