{"slug": "dangerzone", "name": "Dangerzone", "category": "security", "category_name": "Security and passwords", "description": "", "recommenders": 3, "commenters": 3, "warners": 0, "score": 2.547, "rising": -0.98, "first": "2026-01-21", "latest": "2026-04-03", "why": "it's designed to keep journalists (and other security-minded folk) safe from untrusted attachments", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 3, "neutral": 0, "compare": 0, "warn": 0}, "spark": [0, 0, 2, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0], "listed": true, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "it's designed to keep journalists (and other security-minded folk) safe from untrusted attachments", "kind": "", "icon": true, "domain": null, "github_repo": "github.com/freedomofpress/dangerzone", "official_url": "https://dangerzone.rocks/", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["Dangerzone"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 762159584, "item_id": 47634974, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47634974", "by": "me_jumper", "date": "2026-04-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "we could use a well established project instead", "excerpt": "Or, you know, instead of burning tokens/trees we could use a well established project instead ;) https://github.com/freedomofpress/dangerzone", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "You can now run a full Linux operating system inside a 6mb PDF"}, {"id": 747423632, "item_id": 46713977, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46713977", "by": "david_shaw", "date": "2026-01-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "it's designed to keep journalists (and other security-minded folk) safe from untrusted attachments", "excerpt": "From the tool description linked: > Dangerzone works like this: You give it a document that you don't know if you can trust (for example, an email attachment). Inside of a sandbox, Dangerzone converts the document to a PDF (if it isn't already one), and then converts the PDF into raw pixel data: a huge list of RGB color values for each page. Then, outside of the sandbox, Dangerzone takes this pixel data and converts ", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Take potentially dangerous PDFs, and convert them to safe PDFs"}, {"id": 747423488, "item_id": 46713968, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46713968", "by": "tclancy", "date": "2026-01-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "https://github.com/freedomofpress/dangerzone/blob/main/dangerzone/cli.py", "excerpt": "https://github.com/freedomofpress/dangerzone/blob/main/dangerzone/cli.py How hard did you look the other times?", "context": "", "use_case": "Sanitizing PDFs", "switched_from": "", "story": "Take potentially dangerous PDFs, and convert them to safe PDFs"}]}], "caveats": [], "who": [], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["sanitizing pdfs"], "compared": [{"slug": "gvisor", "name": "gVisor", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [{"id": 747471456, "item_id": 46716966, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46716966", "by": "apyrgiotis", "date": "2026-01-22", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Dangerzone dev btw", "excerpt": "Oof, that's a great point. We briefly touched on this a few weeks ago, but from the angle of canary tokens / tracking pixels [1]. Security-wise, our main concern is protecting people who read suspicious documents, such as journalists and activists, but we do have sources/leakers in our threat model as well. Our docs are lacking in this regard, but we will update them with information targeted specifically to non-tech", "context": "Dangerzone developer", "use_case": "sanitizing untrusted PDFs", "switched_from": "", "story": "Take potentially dangerous PDFs, and convert them to safe PDFs"}, {"id": 747470640, "item_id": 46716915, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46716915", "by": "almet", "date": "2026-01-22", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "(Hi, disclaimer: I'm one of the current dangerzone maintainers)", "excerpt": "(Hi, disclaimer: I'm one of the current dangerzone maintainers) You are correct: that's basically what Dangerzone is doing! The challenges for us are to have a sandbox that keeps being secure and make it possible for non-tech folks (e.g. journalists) to run this in their machines easily. About the sandbox: - Making sure that it's still updated requires some work: that's testing new container images, and having a way ", "context": "", "use_case": "Safe PDF conversion", "switched_from": "", "story": "Take potentially dangerous PDFs, and convert them to safe PDFs"}, {"id": 747469248, "item_id": 46716828, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46716828", "by": "almet", "date": "2026-01-22", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "that's the very threat Dangerzone is designed to protect you from", "excerpt": "(Hi, disclaimer: I'm one of the current dangerzone maintainers) That's a good question :-) Opening PDFs, or images, or any other document directly inside your machine, even with a limited PDF viewer, potentially exposes your environment to this document. The reason is that exploits in the image/font/docs parsing/rendering libraries can happen and are exploited in the wild. These exploits make it possible for an attac", "context": "", "use_case": "sanitize untrusted documents", "switched_from": "", "story": "Take potentially dangerous PDFs, and convert them to safe PDFs"}, {"id": 747467264, "item_id": 46716704, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46716704", "by": "almet", "date": "2026-01-22", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "", "excerpt": "(Hi, dangerzone maintainer here) There is indeed a dangerzone-cli tool\u00b9, and it should be made more visible. We plan on updating/consolidating our docs in the foreseeable future, to make things clearer. Also, plans are here to make it possible to use dangerzone as a library, which should help use cases like the one you mention. \u00b9 https://github.com/freedomofpress/dangerzone/blob/main/dangerzone/cli.py", "context": "Dangerzone maintainer", "use_case": "Sanitize untrusted PDFs", "switched_from": "", "story": "Take potentially dangerous PDFs, and convert them to safe PDFs"}], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46712815", "title": "Take potentially dangerous PDFs, and convert them to safe PDFs", "mentions": 6}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47582792", "title": "You can now run a full Linux operating system inside a 6mb PDF", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {}, "2025-12": {}, "2026-01": {"recommend": 2}, "2026-02": {}, "2026-03": {}, "2026-04": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-05": {}, "2026-06": {}, "2026-07": {}, "2026-08": {}, "2026-09": {}, "2026-10": {}}, "quotes": [{"id": 762159584, "item_id": 47634974, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47634974", "by": "me_jumper", "date": "2026-04-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "we could use a well established project instead", "excerpt": "Or, you know, instead of burning tokens/trees we could use a well established project instead ;) https://github.com/freedomofpress/dangerzone", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "You can now run a full Linux operating system inside a 6mb PDF"}, {"id": 747423632, "item_id": 46713977, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46713977", "by": "david_shaw", "date": "2026-01-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "it's designed to keep journalists (and other security-minded folk) safe from untrusted attachments", "excerpt": "From the tool description linked: > Dangerzone works like this: You give it a document that you don't know if you can trust (for example, an email attachment). Inside of a sandbox, Dangerzone converts the document to a PDF (if it isn't already one), and then converts the PDF into raw pixel data: a huge list of RGB color values for each page. Then, outside of the sandbox, Dangerzone takes this pixel data and converts ", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Take potentially dangerous PDFs, and convert them to safe PDFs"}, {"id": 747423488, "item_id": 46713968, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46713968", "by": "tclancy", "date": "2026-01-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "https://github.com/freedomofpress/dangerzone/blob/main/dangerzone/cli.py", "excerpt": "https://github.com/freedomofpress/dangerzone/blob/main/dangerzone/cli.py How hard did you look the other times?", "context": "", "use_case": "Sanitizing PDFs", "switched_from": "", "story": "Take potentially dangerous PDFs, and convert them to safe PDFs"}]}