WHITE HAT HACKER: Remove DRM from Adobe Digital Editions

Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Remove DRM from Adobe Digital Editions – How-To guide

STEP 1 – Find the inept files with code for Python

Find in the internet two text files: ineptkey.pyw — version 5.4 and ineptpdf.pyw — version 8.4.50. Versions can be different, but they should not be too far away from what I have indicated. Save them in your folder, we will need these files a little bit later.

STEP 2 – Install Adobe Digital Editions and activate

I used version 1.7.2 of ADE. Here’s a screenshot below:

And once you are done, you should see this:

STEP 3 — Install Python with Crypto modules

Link the Python distribution Python 2.7 (do not use version 3!, it is not going to work for this task). File name is python-2.7.1.msi in my case.

For the crypto modules go to PyCrypto and choose file dedicated version for Python 2.7 (if you installed Python 2.7 of course, because they should match!): pycrypto-2.1.0.win32-py2.7.exe

Look at your ineptkey.pyw and ineptpdf.pyw files in Windows Explorer, they should look like this now:

STEP 4 — Retrieve your Adept key

At that point it is important that you have not only installed Adobe Digital Editions but also have it activated, otherwise you will get an error “Adobe Digital Editions not activated”:

OK, double-click ineptkey.pyw script, in a second you should see the message “Key successfully retrieved to adeptkey.der”:

Check the folder with the script, there will be the key:

Important to understand, that it is your own key, which can be applied to all books you buy in the future. Therefore, this step ( adept key extraction) is done normally only once. Keep your adeptkey.der in a safe place. Things may change with Digital Editions and the possibility to retrieve the key may not be available anymore.

STEP 5 — Decryption

Double-click ineptpdf.pyw file to see this dialog screen:

Type in required information and click Decrypt. Done! Try to open your pdf book in Acrobat Reader now.

STEP 6 — Cleaning

Sometimes while browsing inside the decrypted books, you may see the Adobe Acrobat error: “There was an error processing a page. There was a problem reading this document (110).”

Or there could be another error: “An error exists on this page. Acrobat may not display the page correctly. Please contact the person who created the PDF document to correct the problem.”

To fix that I use Elcomsoft Advanced PDF password recovery program (APDFPR), as in that case the reason was the Java Script (JS) code left in the document:

You can also try to sanitize your document if APDFPR does not help getting rid of 110 error. Find this option in Acrobat Professional under Tools > Protection (see the screenshots below):

If some pages in the decrypted document are still not willing to show, try more gentle scrolling (seriously) and avoid pushing PageDown key, or choose alternative PDF viewing software.