Sleuths Crack Tracking Code Discovered in Color Printers

[EricNoah]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/18/AR2005101801663_pf.html

Spooky story for halloween!

 

[Ferret]

Woah, Freaky. Its quite scary, like the article said, that something like this has gone unnoticed for so long.

 

[Del]

That's just like the EFF to figure something like this out.

 

[John Q. Mayhem]

So they artificially did to laser printers what mechanical printers and typewriters do naturally already? Sounds fine to me.

 

[der_kluge]

I've known about this for years. They didn't just now figure out that the codes were there, apparently they've figured out how to decipher them. That's what this story is about. I didn't know printers had it. I thought it was just on copiers.

 

[ragboy]

Unfortunately, what the story is really about is much scarier: Government agencies with back doors into technology.

Something everyone has *known* was happening, but this is red-handed proof. Sucks.

 

[Zappo]

So they artificially did to laser printers what mechanical printers and typewriters do naturally already? Sounds fine to me.

Not really. A mechanical printer leaves unique little spots and flaws, that's true. However, you need to have the printer on hand to check if a given sheet was printed by that printer. Having the sheet alone won't help much unless you have a bunch of "suspect" printers to compare it against.

But this is different. The printers encode their serial number on the sheet. This means that you only need the sheet, and then you can easily find out which printer printed it and where it was sold.

I agree with ragboy. The idea that a democratic government can and did put backdoors into commercially available technology is chilling. For what I know, my DSL router could be used to snoop on my network traffic remotely.

BTW, do CD writers burn their serial number on CDs they write?

 

[Arravis]

I hadn't realized this was a secret... I'm in the industry (graphic design/prepress) and this is something I've known about since the early 90's. I had always assumed it was fairly well known.

Actually, I think I heard about it at Kinko's (I was the CS manager at the time, this was while I was still in college) from one of the Xerox guys servicing a machine. I actually don't think it was ever a secret... just something most people didn't know, obviously.

 

[Arravis]

Few more bits of printer's/designer's knowledge:

All copiers have an internal counter that keeps track of the number of copies made on it.

Most copiers (especially color ones) are able to detect patterns in US money and have an additionally counter that records any time that pattern is copied. When the copier is services, and if that counter has been tagged, they are supposed to contact the Secret Service. I've actually had them show up, was most interesting.

Xerox's Docutech copier (a Huge sized copier with 15' reach) has the same money counter, but has the additional "feature" of putting a giant VOID on anything copied with that pattern. I've had this happen and I wasn't copying money, but was copying some clipart that was designed to look like money. They were to be used as coupons for a store, but of course they all came out with void written all over them. We changed the graphics and were able to get them to print, but a few days after the Xerox service guy came by... the SS come to speak with us. Thankfully I had kept all the "Void" copies and handed them over.

P.S.: It's also trivially simple to install a camera in a copier to take pics of everything that's copied... Xerox and the CIA famously did this at the Russian Embassy back in the early 70's.

 

[diaglo]

Unfortunately, what the story is really about is much scarier: Government agencies with back doors into technology.

Something everyone has *known* was happening, but this is red-handed proof. Sucks.

i'm with the government and here to help you.

the check is in the mail.

diaglo "big brother" Ooi