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Counterfeiting With High Resolution Inkjets
Makarand writes "Thanks to the availability of low cost high quality inkjet printers, crooks
are now able to
produce currency indistinguishable from the real
banknotes, at least under dim lighting conditions like that in a bar or a nightclub.
The term "digifeiters" is being coined for counterfeiters that use
cheap high-resolution printers to produce fake currency. Unlike costly color xerographic copiers that come inbuilt with features
to detect security details on banknotes and stop currency copying, no cheap printers
come with such feature. An anti-digifeiting system for cheaper printers may consist of printer driver software capable of recognizing data patterns indicating currencies of several countries." I wonder what GimpPrint would think of being forced to print or not print certain documents based on their contents.
Go for plastic bank notes like australia. They work well... They even have clear patches you can see right through.
I'm not sure about you... but I'd certainly notice if the texture or "feel" of a dollar was off. Aren't they printed on an almost clothlike paper or something? I notice the difference between that and normal printing paper easily. So where are these people getting that style of paper, and does it change the quaility or ability to print... or are bar tenders and the such just stupid and don't realize?
...
I mention this because this could be the next step for inkjets (if it hasn't been done already!) with all the privacy concerns that entails.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
Actually, it's a common practice for a counterfreiting operation to 'launder' its money before putting it out into circulation. They will literally put it in a washer / dryer to give it that 'worn down' look and feel.
Last year, someone went into a convenience store in rural Michigan, and bought a candy bar. They paid for it with a $200 bill with George W Bush's face on it. The clerk gave the customer about $199.30 in change without a problem.
I think it was the manager who first raised the question about the validity of this bill later.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Is this the incentive for the US to change it's currency? Most countries change their notes eventually anyway, so maybe America should consider doing it sooner rather than later.
The UK has that fancy bit of shiny foil woven into the paper that is easy to spot, and Australia uses polymer notes with transparent windows in them (these last longer than paper too). There are lots of alternatives available that a simple printer could not copy.
OTOH, as Bruce Schneier pointed out in Secrets and Lies, sometimes the cost of addressing the problem is more than the cost that the problem causes you. :-)
"An anti-digifeiting system for cheaper printers may consist of printer driver software capable of recognizing data patterns indicating currencies of several countries." I wonder what GimpPrint would think of being forced to print or not print certain documents based on their contents.
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I don't think it'd make any difference for printing software. The only software that would be likely to sport anti-counterfeiting is the firmware in the printer itself.
Anyhow, good luck to make a piece of software that detects fake banknotes, and even if it did detect fake dollars with 100% accuracy (fat chance), I'll just print fake Irakian dinars and off I'll be to the currency exchange counter. No wait
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Sort of related: HP now offers invisible ink for inkjet printers viewable only under UV or IR light, intended to print stuff like tracking barcode on financial documents without customers noticing them (so shred all your junk mail, not just stuff with visible account numbers, since you don't know what might be printed invisibly on it). Maybe that's another way they can surreptitiously tag the output of color printers. Your printer specs say the inkjet print head has 48 dots? Have you ever actually counted them? Maybe they'll add an unannounced 49th dot that squirts invisible ink on the paper, and a tiny amount of invisible ink in a secret chamber of every cartridge. Yeah! That's the real reason the govt wants to extend the DMCA ban third-party inkjet refills, so they can keep tracing printer output back to its source! Tinfoil hat time... :)
Every time a guy gets a threesome, somewhere in heaven an angel gets his wings. --Cary Tennis
My store went from no counterfeits to getting 4 fake $20 in as many weeks. Then I got a UV lamp that beeps if something reacts too much under the light. It can be defeated, but that requires more effort than clicking print and lining up both sides of the page.
Since we started using that, we have stopped almost $150 in counterfeits. Not bad for a $40 lamp. In the two years that it has been in place, the bank has not found anymore counterfeits in our deposits.
One would think that a nice dim area where these bills are easier to pass, that a UV lamp would be even more useful since you could see things like the UV emblem that is on canadian money or the red fibers.
Do they actually recognize that currency is being copied and prohibit the operation, or add watermark stuff like "void".
They copy the bills, but some do stuff to make the copied bills unusable, like make a perfect copy of a bill but make the entire page hot pink. The Ricoh printers we had at my last job did that. Other copiers make the copy, but insert a code number somewhere on the bill unbeknownst to the counterfeiter. When the bill makes its way to the Secret Service, they find the code, contact the company, and find out where that copier is located, which speeds up the investigation quite a bit. IIRC, a few years back they nailed some idiot Cornell students this way. Unfortunately I can't find the story on Google, and I don't quite remember where I heard it-- possibly from one of the Discovery Channel or History Channel documentaries concerning the U.S. Mint or the Secret Service or counterfeiting.
~Philly
Posted anonymously to not karma whore, and, well, for obvious reasons.
For about five years now I have been in the counterfeitting game. Using nothing more than an Epson printer, teslin (a special paper that does not tear, and bonds to laminate very well), and laminates with holograms (easily made using a hacked gold interference cart), I can produce fake identification cards that will pass every test up to destructive (not including having them run against the DMV database).
After a while, creating fake IDs was child's play...nothing new here, time for me to move along. I learned how to create fake checks with nothing more than a laser printer, specialized check stock, and specialized MICR toner. When combined with the fake IDs, it took only a few minutes of work to illicitely gain hundreds of dollars.
Unforunantly, this method has become more widespread, so it was time to move on. Now, using an offset printing press, a magnetic encoder, and an embosser, I can create fake credit cards in a matter of a half hour or so. Go to the store, swipe for a few laptops, and sell.
This said, I have NEVER counterfeitted money because all of these methods are just so much easier. Why bother having the Secret Service breathing down your back for that, when you can just utilize the same techniques to make large amounts of cash?
Point being: most people who utilize fraud for a living do NOT make fake currency, and those who do have much better equipment than described. I'd worry about stopping identity theft, which is all too easy to perform.
I think a wide spread issue of this ability to reproduce bills would be a problem if they were good enough to fool change machines.
I know the local gas station accepts bills in their outdoor machines, let alone do it your self carwashes that provide coins for change to use in the machines, though some are switching to tokens rather then quarters. I've never tried something I knew was counterfit, but i'd imagine that, given that these vending machines use scanners to identify a bill, i'd think they'd be easier to fool.
Further more, small time counterfitting is less likely to raise an eyebrow. A $20, $50, $100 will be looked at most carefuly... where a $5, or a $10 isn't going to be considered as much of a threat.
While I wouldn't want to buy, let's say a car, with quarters, they are indeed legal tender, and no human is going to argue about a quarter being counterfit, and quarters don't have any serial numbers to boot.
This is what i'd be concerned about, a flood of sub $20 counterfit currency.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
How is this possible? Anyway, I called the bank; they said they would take it back and do the paperwork. But they would -not- reimburse me the $20! Cheap bastards! (kidding) ;-)
Which raises the question: If something happens and it isn't on Google, did it really happen? :)
"Your printer specs say the inkjet print head has 48 dots? Have you ever actually counted them? Maybe they'll add an unannounced 49th dot that squirts invisible ink on the paper, and a tiny amount of invisible ink in a secret chamber of every cartridge. Yeah! That's the real reason the govt wants to extend the DMCA ban third-party inkjet refills, so they can keep tracing printer output back to its source! Tinfoil hat time... :)"
As someone who's worked on peinters there's no secret chamber, or 49th dot. The firmware I doubt however, not because it isn't possible, but because it isn't economical on consumer equipment.
WHatever happened to the good ole days and the fun and exciting world of off-set Litho or even a silkscreen?
Sure not everyone has the facilities, but you can carry off a more "heist" for less than the cost of the average high quality printer...
Not to mention the extra snazzy-ness of custom ink, knowledge of paper with cloth content, and OIL based perm. inks which won't run through your fingers while trying to pass the stuff off...
Printmaking..It's an art!
The fakes are indistinguishable from the real thing, even by experts. (No surprise, they're made by experts.) Maybe Syria has a harder time, now, disposing of them, with its smuggling routes through Iraq interfered with. (Closed? You must be kidding.) Who knows how much is being printed in Russia? Dollars are very popular there.
It didn't take long at all to start copying the new bills, which is why the U.S. is going to another design already. You probably have some Syrian bills in your pocket right now. Take a look and see if you can spot them.
Meanwhile the Treasury is harrassing an artist, J.S.Boggs, for drawing funny money by hand and exchanging it for face value. Your tax "dollars" at work.
Although it wouldn't pass a rigorous inspection, spending the printed money at a grocery store or similar location would probably be really easy (nobody would check it for the special security features, and previous posters have mentioned brands of paper that have that "money feel" to them).
That's it. I'm no longer part of Team Sanity.
If 100 dollar bills are physically larger than 50's, and 50's larger than 20's and 20's larger than 10's and 10's larger than 5's and 1's smallest, it'll be kinda tough to bleach the bill and print a larger bill on it. Come on China has been doing it for years. But the US wouldn't wanna be like china would they?
For several months, I worked in a bank cash vault (Fifth Third Bank, Toledo OH USA) and noted some things.
... but then again, in handling coin, I soon learned to listen to the distinctive sound of silver tinging against the cupro-nickel normal coinage in the sealed bags.
(There was one false alarm that turned out to be Eisenhower dollars.)
... I can only conclude that this is because that these are generally places where the lighting is more dim, lots of small transactions take place, and frankly, where the environment is busy and loud.
Counterfeit 20s (and some 10s) showed time and time again in their deposits.
(It was particularly amusing to contact the customer about the debit, since it seems some of them expect the bank to simply replace the bill with a real one.)
... of course, it was a washed out line and that more than anything told me it was counterfeit.
... bills go through a lot, and you can't just go by the hue.
I've seen bills that have been dyed ... light green, dark purple, things like that.
It happens.
Firstly, silver coinage is very much out there, even to the point that a handful of silver Kennedy half dollars can be found in a single deposit from a department store (there was even a Franklin half in one batch). Perhaps people just don't notice silver coinage even in high-volume retail
Secondly, fake twenty dollar (US$20) bills are being easily passed along in bars
It could also be that the criminal element that does the counterfeiting is native to the bar-going crowd.
I have inspected these fake 20s in some detail. I noted right off the bat the "obvious" difference: the overall hue of the bill is off just enough to be suspicious. It is a little darker, and either slightly more yellow, brown and even a tiny bit purple. So it is easy for me to believe that these bills can be passed off in a darker environment.
The texture of the bills was OK, surprisingly. It could be that the paper was run through a washing and/or brushing mechanism to more simulate the cloth-y feel of a real bill. As for the microprinting
P.S. A final note about hue
[You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]
I think that would make a great plot for a caper movie -- pulling off a big heist of real currency paper from Crane & Co.
You hit the nail on the head.
The U.S. Treasury has never ended the lifespan of any of the bill styles it's printed. If the U.S. Treasury authorized a note's printing, then it is legal tender no matter how old it is or what its denomination.
If you wanted, you could counterfeit $2 bills. They rarely get back to the banks. people tend to horde them. But they are legal tender even though they where retired from new printing runs years ago.
Unless and until the Treasury recalls and eliminates all the "old" bills, the new bill formats will do nothing to stop counterfeiters. Copiers will simply choose to copy the older and less secure bills.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
My cousin is currently in jail for this crime.
He was spend over $10,000 per month on ink cartridges. The `special` paper was very easy to get ahold of, so don't let that fool you. This was not a `small-time` operation either. There were 4+ print-houses setup in 2 cities. Each warehouse had more then 40 printers.
He made $10, $20, and $100 notes. Canadian currency has a little psudo-holographic square in the corner. He just used a simple little green/gold foil glued onto the paper to overcome this level of protection. The cops finally caught him after he owned the following: 2 Ford Mustangs 1 20' boat 4 Jet-ski's 1 Lincoln Navigator SUV 4 Houses (and he bought them all with cash)
To say he made millions would be an understatement.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
$3 bills?
Heck, try spending some nice crisp $2 bills (REAL!). People look at you like you've grown a new head.
Magicians that do tricks with money work right on the edge of legality. Defacing currency is illegal if you attempt to pass it off.
If you get a batch of new notes, it's likely that the serial numbers will be consecutive. On US currency, the green ink used for the serial numbers can be erased quite cleanly with a regular pencil eraser. So you take two consecutively numbered bills and erase the last digit of each. Now it appears you have two bills with the same serial number. Spectators generally don't know how many digits are in a serial number and thus won't notice that it's short. You can burn a bill right in front of their eyes then produce the substitute for a startling illusion.
There are lots of gaffed coins out there, too. Craftsmen start with real coins and modify them, so they're not counterfitting. Inexpensive ones look good. Expensive ones are uncanny. The trick is not to spend them accidentally. :-)
You can do that sort of thing yourself, too. The simplest form of steganography is to diddle the LSB of one of the colours. Since the human eye doesn't focus well in the blue wavelengths, you would filter the host image to create a 23-bit RGB (887) image and OR it with your one-bit RGB (001) data image. Extracting the data is a matter of scanning the original (if not already in electronic form) and filtering out everything but the blue LSB. The real challenge is determining the best patterns to use to encode your data so that it can be recovered if the image is damaged enroute (as would quickly happen with currency). Like a barcode image, you would want the embedded data to have a large surface area, delimiters, CRCs and have redundant copies distributed throughout the host image.