Defense-in-Depth: Protecting Document Processing Pipelines
Convertly Technical Team
Information Security & Infrastructure • Convertly
Documents are complex binary files that can conceal malicious macros, buffer overflow exploits, and font parsing attacks. Here is how Convertly secures every stage of the document pipeline.
Key Editorial Takeaways
- ✓File extensions are untrustworthy; magic-byte validation verifies genuine file types.
- ✓Subprocess isolation with strict resource quotas prevents denial-of-service CPU lockups.
- ✓Stripping active macros from Office files eliminates remote code execution vectors.
Magic-Byte Inspection vs Extension Spoofing
Attackers frequently disguise malicious executable files by appending innocent extensions like .pdf or .png. Convertly never trusts user-supplied file extensions.
Every uploaded payload passes through strict file signature validation (checking for %PDF- or PK\x03\x04 zip headers) before any execution pipeline is invoked.
Server-Side Processing and Input Validation
All conversion tasks run automated background processing with strict input validation and resource monitoring. Even if a malformed or corrupted document attempts processing, it is rejected during header inspection.
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