CRW

Home Wiki

Nitro Pro

View on consumerrights.wiki ↗

Work in progress
This article has been flagged for additional work. Treat its claims as provisional.
Stub
This article is a stub. The wiki community is still building it out.
Verification concerns
Editors have raised concerns about the verifiability of one or more claims.
Contents7
  1. Background
  2. Consumer impact summary
  3. Incidents
  4. Massive data breach (2020)
  5. Perpetual license deactivation (2025)
  6. See also
  7. References

❗Article Status Notice: This Article is a stub

This article is underdeveloped, and needs additional work to meet the wiki's Content Guidelines and be in line with our Mission Statement for comprehensive coverage of consumer protection issues. Learn more ▼

Issues may include:

  • This article needs to be expanded to provide meaningful information
  • This article requires additional verifiable evidence to demonstrate systemic impact
  • More documentation is needed to establish how this reflects broader consumer protection concerns
  • The connection between individual incidents and company-wide practices needs to be better established
  • The article is simply too short, and lacks sufficient content

How you can help:

  • Add documented examples with verifiable sources
  • Provide evidence of similar incidents affecting other consumers
  • Include relevant company policies or communications that demonstrate systemic practices
  • Link to credible reporting that covers these issues
  • Flesh out the article with relevant information

This notice will be removed once the article is sufficiently developed. Once you believe the article is ready to have its notice removed, please visit the Moderator's noticeboard, or the Discord (join here) and post to the #appeals channel, or mention its status on the article's talk page.

Nitro Pro
Basic Information
Release Year 2018
Product Type Software
In Production Yes
Official Website https://www.gonitro.com/


Nitro Pro is a Portable Document Format (PDF) editing application[1] and electronic signature software.[2]

Background

Claimed to be used by over 10 thousand business customers and 1.8 million licensed users, Nitro is an application used to create, edit, and sign PDFs and digital documents. As part of their service offering, Nitro offers a cloud service used by customers to share documents with co-workers or other organizations involved in the document creation process. A massive data breach suffered by the Nitro PDF service impacts many well-known organizations, including Google, Apple, Microsoft, Chase, and Citibank.[3]

In April 2023 Nitro Pro (NTO) was de-listed from the Australian Stock Exchange[4] when the company was purchased by Ellerston Capital.[5]

Consumer impact summary

Overview of concerns that arise from the conduct towards users of the product (if applicable):

  • User Freedom
  • User Privacy
  • Business Model
  • Market Control

Add your text below this box. Once this section is complete, delete this box by clicking on it and pressing backspace.


Incidents

This is a list of all consumer-protection incidents related to this product. Any incidents not mentioned here can be found in the Nitro Pro category.

Massive data breach (2020)

In September 2020, the Nitro PDF service suffered a massive data breach which exposed over 70 million unique e-mail addresses. Cyber-security intelligence firm Cyble has told BleepingComputer that a threat actor is selling the user and document databases, as well as 1TB of documents, that they claim to have stolen from Nitro Software's cloud service. Cyble states that the 'user_credential' database table contains 70 million user records containing email addresses, full names, bcrypt hashed passwords, titles, company names, IP addresses, and other system-related data.[3]

Nitro's response

On 21 October 2020, Nitro Software issued an advisory to the Australia Stock Exchange, stating that they were affected by a "low impact security incident" but that no customer data was impacted. Despite Nitro's advisory, the data breach exposed names, bcrypt password hashes and the titles of converted documents. The data was provided to HIBP by dehashed.com.[6]

Perpetual license deactivation (2025)

In June 2025, customers that had bought a perpetual license for Version 12 and older suddenly found themselves receiving an error message informing them their license was expired. Attempts to use their serial numbers to activate would return an error stating that the number did not exist. When this was brought up on Nitro's support forum, an employee shared the following in response on 13 June 2025:[7]

To maintain the highest standards of security and performance, we can no longer support legacy versions of Nitro PDF Pro. These older versions are not patched for security vulnerabilities and may expose your organization to risk.

To make your upgrade as seamless as possible, we are offering our Nitro PDF Standard subscription plan at more than 70% off the regular price, with this discounted rate locked in for three years.

By upgrading, you’ll gain access to the latest versions of Nitro PDF Pro for Windows, Mac, and iOS, along with new web-based and AI-powered tools to enhance your document workflows.  Upgrading to a current release ensures you benefit from the latest features, performance enhancements, and security protections.

For additional information or to redeem the discounted upgrade offer, please go to our Upgrade Portal and enter your 18-digit serial number.

https://www.gonitro.com/support/upgrade

Upon completing your Nitro Pro purchase, you will receive an email with instructions for setting up your Nitro account and using the full suite of Nitro products.

Thank you.

Additionally, Nitro Pro issued the following statement regarding their perpetual licenses:[8]

Nitro is transitioning to a subscription licensing model. All Nitro PDF Pro for Windows perpetual licenses will be deactivated by December 31, 2025. You will receive an email notification prior to deactivation. You can upgrade up to 20 perpetual licenses to a subscription now, regardless of the deactivation date.

Those that refused to upgrade to a subscription-based plan were no longer able to use the product.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Ansaldo, Michael (9 Jul 2018). "Nitro Pro 12 review: A better document workflow". PCWorld. Archived from the original on 29 Jul 2018. Retrieved 31 Oct 2018.
  2. ↑ "Nitro PDF Pro". The University of Melbourne. Archived from the original on 4 Oct 2025. Retrieved 4 Mar 2026.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Abrams, Lawrence (26 Oct 2020). "Massive Nitro data breach impacts Microsoft, Google, Apple, more". BleepingComputer. Archived from the original on 28 Jan 2026. Retrieved 4 Mar 2026.
  4. ↑ "Nitro Software Delisting". stocklight. 18 Apr 2023. Archived from the original on 4 Oct 2025. Retrieved 4 Mar 2026.
  5. ↑ "Ellerston JAADE's Investment in Nitro". Ellerston Capital. 8 May 2023. Archived from the original on 10 Nov 2025. Retrieved 4 Mar 2026.
  6. ↑ "Nitro". Have I Been Pwned. 2020. Archived from the original on 22 Feb 2026. Retrieved 4 Mar 2026.
  7. ↑ Capiral, Joseph (13 Jun 2025). "Nitro Pro is no longer supported + Serial Number not found for activation". Nitro. Archived from the original on 4 Oct 2025. Retrieved 4 Mar 2026.
  8. ↑ "Upgrade to Nitro Pro". Nitro. Archived from the original on 5 Sep 2025.
Filed under