Slashdot Mirror
27 Central Banks Push Anti-Counterfeit Software
securitas writes "GlobeTechnology reports that the 27-member Central Bank Counterfeit Deterrence Group is behind the anti-counterfeit software in Adobe Photoshop CS, Ulead PhotoImpact, Jasc Paint Shop Pro and others. Consortium members of the Central Bank Counterfeit Deterrence Group include the USA, Canada, Germany, Japan, Australia and many more. Law enforcement agencies and banknote-issuing authorities say that it is a response to the rapid growth of digital counterfeiting. The software is distributed free of charge to hardware and software manufacturers and is voluntary to use. But the European Union is drafting legislation to force manufacturers to include anti-counterfeit measures in all systems, scanners or printers sold in Europe. Counterfeiting and anti-counterfeiting with Adobe Photoshop and other products like inkjet printers have been the subject of recent discussion on Slashdot."
WANTED TO BUY:
1x Adobe Photoshop version
up to but not including CS.
1x High quality inkjet printer,
2002-2003 vintage
Will pay cash.
Trolling is a art,
Honestly, I don't see why people would be too up in arms about this. Digital copying of money can produce some pretty good fakes. And remember, the standard a counterfeit bill has to pass is not an expert's exam, but the exam of the kid at the grocery store. If the bad guy can successfully pass the bill there, it's too late.
Afterall, those who want to photograph money for inclusion in a poster or such in compliance with the too big, too small or other clearly-wrong copy rules spelled out in the law can still do so optically. Making images of money shouldn't be as easy as technology has made making images of everything else.
There goes my replacement Monopoly money.
"In post 9-11 soviet russia, only beowulf clusters of welcomed overlords are belong to old grit-eating Koreans!" aendeur
Homer: Hey Herman, I had to come out here to see what's so funny. [gasps] A counterfeit jeans ring operating out of my car hole! I'm going to tell everyone. Wait here.
wouldn't an EU mandate make open source scanners and image manipulation illegal in the EU? it's not like their providing the source. And if they did, the couterfeiters would just strip it out.
I'm guessing that this is just like most other bank note security systems, some of the clearer details are made public, but others are kept secret since we don't particularly want "Free as in Linux" money out there.
Therefore, I wonder how the central banks of the world are going to implement this in OSS image editors. Afterall, something commented as "//This is where we put the part that stops people trying to open images of money." is gonna be rather easy bypass, and would also require them to define all of the tricks they're using to identify bills in other software too or let some of those checks slide.
Iam glad criminals dont use "The GIMP".
200GB/2TB $7.95 Coupon: SAVE90DOLLAR
Counterfeiting and anti-counterfeiting with Adobe Photoshop and other products like inkjet printers have been the subject of recent discussion on Slashdot."
Heh, not that the Photoshop effort was effective--all you need to do is search the applications section of suprnova.org to find "banknote patch Photoshop CS."
WARNING: If accidentally read, induce vomiting.
- it's not really designed to. Sure, the big organised crime gangs will get around it with no problems at all. But it will stop the casual counterfeiter. This is what it is designed to do.
The problem of course is that _sometimes_ it gets in the way of legitimate uses of digital technology. This is an example of one idiot ruining it for everyone. Life's like that. I pay high car insurance premiums because other people are stupid/lazy/drunk/asleep, even though I'm not.
Yeah, it's annoying, but that's life. It would just be nice if the companies would be more up-front about it. Good on Adobe for coming clean; but they needn't have denied it in the first place!
-- Your mother uses Emacs.
They should make this a user option in the Gimp's preferences dialogue!
Read, L
It's a never ending game. As E. E. Smith said, what physical science can devise, physical science can analyse and reproduce. We just have to keep moving the bar higher than the counterfeiters can easily reach. If the typical US bank note is too easily copied by technology available to the home user, then it's time for the typical US bank note to be updated. Not for the technology to be crippled...
What is the point, if anyone really wants to conterfiet software, they'll find a copy of older versions around. It will work just as well. Heck, why not use paint, with some skill that could work. This won't deter those who truely want to counterfiet. Maybe it will save a few $100 a year from those who are lightly considering it, but mainly it will kunut people who want crystal clear images which the software determines to look like money. This hurts, not helpes IMO
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The heart of the problem is that the legal tender is easily replicable. Coins are harder to reproduce and the payoff is much lower than paper money. Paper money, because it must be printed is susceptible to counterfeiting.
The counterfeiters who are truly making a dent in the money supply don't use Photoshop, though. For the most part, they have real drum printers and very sophisticated printing plates. They are printing money onto real fiber paper. They certainly aren't printing bills out on their Epson Deskjet onto White Shark recycled office paper.
At the extremely low level of low-cost counterfeiting which these software controls attempt to prevent, there simply isn't enough money being produced to worry about. The guy in his basement printing maybe a hundred thousand dollars a day out of his inkjet printer can only use so much of that before getting red flagged by some clerk who notices that his $100 bill isn't quite right (usually because the paper is different).
These software controls don't do anything to attack the real problem of counterfeiters who are doing the real damage printing millions of dollars which are indistinguishable from real money.
I have been pwned because my
i would imagine anyone printing counterfeits out of a computer/printer are amateurs, thus the number of notes printed are limited, therefore they can be used fairly easily without getting caught.
how many times does the shopkeeper in a gas station look so carefully on the notes you pass on to him?
so maybe, just maybe, this kind of Anti-Counterfeit measure is enough to put a lot of people off that wishful thinking.
This is a genuine question : how is it a bad thing ?
:
For me, that means two things
1) if you want to do some parody bill, well, you'll still can, you'll just have to make sure that even from far it looks like parody.
2) 15 years old kids that get drunk for the first time and think that it is a good idea to make some cheap bill to get that coke free won't go 15 years in jail.
This thing just means that if you want to make false money, you'll have to dig a little bit. And if you do, it's clear that you wanted to counterfeit, and you'll go to jail. On the other hand, some kid won't be able to pool a cheap prank that can get him in serious troubles. Good chances are that he'll think "hey, if i've got to go to www.falsemoney.ze, maybe the police/secret service/whatever will notice, so maybe I shouldn't".
Remember, this thing is not, has never been, and will never be to deter mafias from counterfeiting. It's just to make it hard enough for Joe Schmoe that he has to think about his actions, and then decide that it would be stupid to risk 15 years for a prank.
"excuse me sir, I represent the 27 banks the currently back all major mutual funds that invest in your company and keep it afloat. We would like you to put this software in your product please"
Funny how the word voluntary seems to be changing of late.
"Officials with the RCMP and the Bank of Canada refuse to identify or discuss the technology because they don't want to tip off would-be counterfeiters about ways of thwarting the system."
This won't prevent professional criminals from counterfeiting. At least they stated it correctly by saying "would-be counterfeiters". Still, someone with enough ambition and the resources and/or knowledge will still find a way. I'm simply stating the obvious here though.
I am curious though as to how the software prevents counterfeiting. I thought maybe one possibility was comparing a picture with data of an actual bill, but that would mean having data in the software that contained information of the real bill which presents a problem. If anyone has any ideas or information, please share.
Personally, I see major shifts in this area within the next few decades. Improved bills? Increase in amount of counterfeiting equipment? Some sort of digital verification system? Just some ideas.
Also, what about open source software?
Question everything.
Does anybody else think it's a BAD idea to try to legislate software features? Am I the only one who thinks that could cause a lot of problems? - Eric
MakePassword.com Mp3 Blog
the number of GIMP users will balloon as all the counterfeiters switch from photoshop!
AFAIK the crack to Photoshop CS has already been released weeks ago. Not that I sympathise in this case, but any self-respecting hacker will see it as a challenge to break such rules, especially when it receives attention in the press.
Maybe this is just another sign that cash is an inferior medium, and there needs be a better alternative?
We may even resort to scanning change if need be.
and someone will create a better idiot."
668.5
News broadcast: a man was caught trying to pass off counterfeit $20 bills at the candy store. The store owner got suspicious when he noticed none of the colours stayed within the lines. When questioned, he responded: "I guess I feathered my alpha mask too much."
click-clack, front and back. I'm not moving this car otherwise.
I tried creating very small (~16x16?) GIF icons 4 years ago using Paint Shop Pro (the 30-day trial version) and I noticed that whenever I saved an image, it kept adding some sort of watermark to the image, shifting the color of a handful of non-adjacent pixels within what had previously been a solid band of color to a slightly different color in a way that was barely noticeable to the eye, but very noticable to me when trying to hand-edit the GIFs while zoomed in.
I kept trying to change the pixels back and re-save the image, and whenever I saved the image, the mysterious watermark pixels would re-appear.
I think I switched to something more primitive like MS Paint (eep) to workaround the problem.
--LP
Now, I'm sure this post is going to be flooded with tons of people saying "what's the problem? I don't want to counterfit money." Neither do I, but I'm still worried about this. It sets a precedent for software being crippled to suit the government. This is no different in principle from having an email program that alerts the department of homeland security when you send emails that advocate terrorism. It's our right to have all of the finest tools for breaking every law imaginable so long as we do not exercise them. That means owning guns, copies of the anarchist's cookbook, whatever. That's what the second amendment is all about...the founding fathers did not trust the government to disarm us, and rightly so. I have the right to be able to counterfit money...it's only once I actually counterfit money that the Government has a right to tell me what I can and cannot do.
But there is another kind of evil that we must fear most... and that is the indifference of good men.
So, the question is - don't you all think it will come down to point where the Government issues cash cards?
It saves them money (vs printing money) AND It (should) be harder to conterfeit than paper money (e.g. cryptologically secure).
It will piss off the credit card companies, but wouldn't it be a solution?
Along these lines - would coins be any harder to fake? I wouldn't mind carrying more change, if, say $20 coins were the size of dimes...
It goes without saying, that I wouldn't buy such a card if it weren't anonymous...
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
We may even resort to scanning change if need be.
Just use NZ coins in Australia, they're the same size and metal content and have the Queen's head on them, but they're cheaper. Machines don't know the difference, most Australians don't bother looking or care enough.
For example, with a printer, something along the lines of a microcontroller (running embedded linux) which connects to the print head, print head drive circuits and paper drive circuits. The existing printer is used only toprovide a mechanical chassis.
It might even make financial sense. Buy that entry level printer, which uses similar mechanical components to that high end printer, and end up with an 'open source' solution that exceeds the capabilities of the high end printer but costs less. Alternatively, don't throw out that obsolete printer but reuse the chassis and convert it into a state-of-the-art printer.
This is only gonna prevent some guy at home from making a funny counterfeit bill on his little inkjet to show off to his friends. I know, i've done it before. I'm like hey check out this...Then i tore it in two and they were like "WHY ARE YOU THROWING AWAY A PERFECTLY GOOD DOLLAR BILL?"...When i tossed the 2nd one, they went to grab it..then I told them to look closely. Oh by the way, that isn't illegal either! And neither is scanning a bill in and printing it out, then printing some propaganda on the other side, and leaving it places, so people will pick it up thinking its a real bill. Or making funny alterations (such as the sex dollar bill)...There's reasons to scan in money that don't involve counterfeiting. I know, I've scanned in money before for the above reasons. I would have been very annoyed if the software wouldn't let me scan it in. But know what, that wouldn't have stopped me, I woulda just scanned it into some crappy software then imported it into photoshop or psp.
.01% of all the counterfeiting going on is done on some little inkjet by some guy using photoshop. This isn't going to stop *anything important*. This is just some feel-good measure, and THATS ALL IT IS.
Face it, maybe
Now, the scary thing is, what do you wanna be that these "image recognition" techniques are being patented, marketed, and sold. Imagine not being able to scan in somethign from a magazine or book because it has a code on it marking it as copyrighted. After all, if you were going to scan it in, you were *obviously* going to do something bad, like make an illegal copy! That's where I see this going: sort of a drm thats built into scanners, printers, and image software!
replacing it with NEW Folger's Crystals! (lets see if they notice the difference)
Correct. They are no more hackers, in any sense of the word, than someone who uses a computer to type in the latest Stephen King short story and putting it on usenet is.
Or someone who rips a CD.
Or copies an unprotected propriatary file.
Mere use of a computer is not hacking.
The correct term for the people in this case is "counterfeiter."
KFG
The paper bank note is 200 year old technology so why don't I hear ANYTHING about a replacement for the banknote? And while I think that the US has done some interesting things with anti-counterfeiting measures, strong arming corporations like Adobe et al into causing their products not to work as intended is not a real solution, does not directly address the problem and in the end only goes to make for more problems for people like you and me.
This mentality of "kick the people" has gone on for way to long. Are we not capable of outdoing Benjimam Franklin? He is the one who invented paper currency to begin with.
Funny that all he did was put to use the printing press, an invention which has been around since 1440 to make these bank notes with. Sort of ironic that he made the money hmself with a press he owned... whooda thunk that people could counterfeit money with printing presses and printers?!?!? So now that printing capabilities a mere 200 years later are more advanced, do you think it's time we look for new ways to produce paper currency? Or should we just start walking backwards down the path of personal empowerment because the tech has gotten too powerful?
Counterfeiter's Screwed.
I suppose you could still fool the clerks with gold plated tungsten, but hey, you wouldn't have to alter software to protect against conterfeiting.
Side [OT] question - how much do you spend in cash? I am sure I am less than 10%, judging by ATM withdrawls vs my tax filings... [credit cards and checks, then automatic debits, and finally cash is "where it all goes" in my house].
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Their title (my bolding): "Central banks hope free software will put a dent in counterfeiting"
And then they mention Adobe Photoshop and Ulead PhotoImpact. Earth to the Globe?
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
Finally, it's just another symptom of the nanny-state mentality that is pervading modern society.
... or how Calvinist Geneva was practically a police state ... or how Sparta was literally a police state ... or how most of Roman history is characterized by subordination of the individual to the state ... for that matter, consider that most of human history is characterized by the institution of slavery.
The nanny-state mentality (nice phrase) isn't peculiar to modern society -- it's common throughout history.
Check out, for example, the history of sumptuary laws
On the balance, the nanny state has been the historical norm; widespread respect for individual initiative is a relatively recent phenomenon.
-kgj
-kgj
So, the question is - don't you all think it will come down to point where the Government issues cash cards?
I think it's more likely that government as we know it will fail altogether, and credit card companies will step in to fill the void.
-kgj
-kgj
"C'mon, of course the 2006 thirteen-dollar bill features Larry Ellison and Carly Fiorina... Gimmee my stuff man..."
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
You know ... I'm really suprised that people still try to make counterfeit money since the penalties are so stiff, and usually are crappy copies.
I think that a credit/debit cards are the future, and that physical money is on the way out. However, that smacks against my privacy ... since it would be tracable.
The problem is that there is no good ANONYMOUS way to purchase things without currency.
Karma? Karma? I don't need no stinkin' karma.
I'm as concerned as anyone about the expansion of copyright and all of the negative consequences for society at large.
But anti-counterfeit measures are good, unless you wish to see the destruction of the civil institution that is money. Sure, money has its problems, sometimes even if you have a lot of it. But counterfeiting robs *everyone* who works for a living, and rationally we should be in favor of the strongest protections necessary.
You should be skeptical (OK I'm American) of any questionable measures (don't use the Patriot act to equate counterfeiting with terrorism (unless you think that counterfeiting is a form of terrorism, since it has the effect (but not the aim) of destroying society)), but consider it war in defense of a fundamental pillar of society.
Money doesnt bother me. What bothers me is whats next to be deemed 'untasteful' to manipulate?
eWEEK has a hack for CS. Just import at another size, then restore. Don't have the link, but it's there.
Fortunately, open source has already secured a position of economic importance, so this is never going to happen.
There will be conflicts ahead, of course, and not just on this counterfeiting issue. Another that's already threatening, here in the U.S., is the broadcast flag for digital television. That seems equally incompatible with open source.
It will be, ah, interesting to see how this plays out in the next few years.
Share and Enjoy: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Is only one of the reasons Australian Currency was switched to Polymer (ie Plastic) rather than Paper.
These plastic notes are physically colored and include clear sections, as opposed to being blank paper with colors printed on them.
One of the other reasons was the durability of the notes.
Oddly enough, when they first came out many people tried to IRON them to remove the wrinkles (they take hard creases very easily) - evey seen a shrinky-dink after it's been baked?
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
Allow perfect scanning, perfect printing, and simply don't allow an exact-scale bill to be printed. All other arguments aside, I don't see how anyone would be hurt by not allowing a bill to be printed within 10% of its true scale. All else being the same, what's wrong with this?
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
When this story first broke, to create the graphic for our campus television station, we had to revert to an old version of Photoshop; even the online image from the Treasury Dept. was blocked by Photoshop CS. At a low resolution.
Ugh. But the Eurion technology is nifty on its own..
I worked for a check printing company that had many scanners, printers, and film output devices that had been stripped of their anti-counterfieting devices. This was a must have since people were routinely designing watermarks, elaborate borders, and color washes that would set off the criminal circuits and freeze he device.
I actually saw these devices as marketshare protection devices. My company and its handful of competitors were rapidly having the marketshare for high quality printing eaten away by good commercial printers. The marketing department may have made all sorts of blather about "finer attention to detail" and "knowing the banking industry" but the process of MICR printing on 2400dpi presses from Macs using Adobe Illustrator could honestly have been done by anyone willing to follow standards.
But it would have been a bit of a problem if this low-end competition were trying to output a check prototype with a watermark, color wash, and elaborate border that continuously set off their anti-counterfieting software. The high end check and document printing business wasn't a monopoly, but I strongly suspect that these were devices strongly desired by every player in the market to keep the sellers from expanding.
Are these measures the same way? They surely sound motivated by similar private market interests.
The problem is that once these copy protection controls are installed everyone will want to use them. Markus Kuhn of Cambridge University has discovered one of the patterns used for detection of bank notes, known as the EURion Constellation. Sure, it's not that big of a deal when only bank notes have the constellation, but expect to see the constellation start showing up in the darndest places.
Soon everyone and their brother will start printing the Constellation onto whatever they feel needs "copy protection." You'll see it printed on photographs and forms and all kinds of junk. Regular people will have their right to make copies and the ability to use their own equipment usurped by others abusing a mechanism that was only supposed to inconvenience counterfeiters.
damn...pity I can't use my mod points on this post...thank you for the enlightenment :)
Simple process, photograph the bill, do your color separations in an older version of photoshop, etc; then burn plates from the color seperated negatives. Better yet, bypass photoshop completely and take several photographs of the bill using different filters over the lens to directly produce your color seperated negatives.
The fact of the matter is that the "big boys" in counterfeiting are NOT using a $50.00 scanner and a $19.99 inkjet printer.
"The strong will do what they want, the weak will do what they must."
-Thucydides
People have a right to use software that does not impose arbitrary restrictions upon them. When Adobe has a virtual monopoly on the image editing market (because their software is really freakin' good), it is in their best interest not to alter the software in such a way that pisses off their customers.
Both Adobe and the Government need to learn a lesson from the recording industry: don't alienate the consumers by adding "features" that restrict their personal rights. Uncle Sam does not need to get involved in this process; what he should do instead is invest more energy into training cashiers pens that change color on fake money, and train cashiers better on how to spot fakes.
Homestarrunner.net -- It's Dot Com!
I've seen images of currency that contains the key pattern of five 1mm circles, but does anyone have a pure image of the trigger pattern, for general use in protecting documents?
As "end targets" of the process, they transform data into false money. Not much can be done further. Cutting, macerating to make them look old, or whatever you plan to do with fake money. And if they don't look like real, you can safely print them and assume they are not real.
But what about scanners and editing software? Bullshit. I scan in $1 to paste my face in and morph it to pink. How illegal is that? I want to include a pile of bills in a clipart I create. I want to create textures for a game I write. I can't, because the data - before being processed - is considered "intended for illegal use". That's complete bullshit. Scanners and image processing software are no place for anti-counterfeiting measures.
It's like I approach a military base and put a film in my camera. I get arrested for taking photos of military objects, even though I didn't even aim my camera at them, and never intended to.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
It could be, or not. If the open source program respects the flag, the vast majority of people won't modify and recompile it. Look at xpdf, which respects the anti-copying flags of Adobe. If it's illegal to distribute the "hacked" version, a vanishingly small percentage of users will have it.
So it could be used as an argument against open source, but it's a disingenuous argument. A few people might hack their TV app, just like a few people might rip out their catalytic converter to get more performance.
I notice that Adobe has not claimed that xpdf violates the DMCA. You can modify xpdf into a circumvention device, but it isn't a circumvention device as shipped.
"Do you think they're idiots?"
Well... To be honest?
Yeah, I do.
Photoshop has many reports of small rotations causing the currency to be scanned. I dunno about the printing though.
(I havn't tested it, so this could all be rubbish)
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Yeah well we dont want all these 'Open Source' terrorists with their 'GIMP' (a very dangerous counterfeiting tool) and their 'GCC' (a 'C' compiler with no DRM restrictions) and their MPlayer (a pirate media player also with no DRM). Don't forget their modified drivers for printers, scanners and digital cameras that allows people to copy money!
Btw did any of these fuckwit DRM mandating freaks think about how they are possibly going to make this work with currency accross the world and how it will work when a country needs to change a note for whatever reason??
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
The fact of the matter is that the "big boys" in counterfeiting are NOT using a $50.00 scanner and a $19.99 inkjet printer.
... much like the RIAA's current problems dealing with many ordinary people with networked computers.
Perhaps the problem they are facing is that a few big boys are being joined by lots of little boys?
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
If legal copies of Photoshop don't work, criminals will only have pirated copies. Wow, big cultural shift there. Think of the awesome deterrent power of that law. Think of all those would-be counterfeiters who will say, "I'll steal from people I don't know, but I would never steal from Adobe."
I often think that only skilled programmers should be allowed to make laws. Those who are making laws now are so illogical that they would never have run-time bugs because they would never get anything to compile.
If you spend several years writing complex programs and debugging them, you develop respect for your own imperfect logic, and for the need to check your work, 90 or 900 times if needed. You develop respect for logic itself, and for the operation of your brain.
Many people become lawmakers because they are somewhat popular, and got elected, only that. For some of them, if clicking on File/Save causes the program to exit, that's okay. It's better not to spend too much time thinking.
The Mac version of Adobe Photoshop CS doesn't seem to include the anti-counterfeit system, I just scanned a $1 bill (the only american currency I have, I'm in the UK) at 1200DPI with a Canon D646U scanner, and it opened with no problems in Photoshop CS. I tried with various UK notes as well and they all opened fine. Yet another reason Apple should be advertising to the criminal/organised crime market ;)
The wind blew so cold
The fan won't turn any more
Files die in the heat
Simply add this Eurion Constellation mark to all your pictures, documents, etc.. Programs incorporating a mechanism that prevents you from altering such pictures will simply become unusable up to the point nobody wants to use them anymore or the protection is removed.
The bills don't even have to be perfect. You can even use a carat to change the phrase "This note is legal tender" to "This note is ^not legal tender" and the phrase "Federal Reserve Bank" to "Federal Express Banc" and the phrase "United States of America" to "Untied States of Vespucia".
You could put a portrait of "George Bush" or even "Alfred E. Newman" on the bill and/or change the denomination to $3.14, you could change the Secretary of the Treasury's signature to 'Pee Wee Herman'.
Then you would have a bill that could be fired out of the back of your getaway van in a crowded place to distract the mobs of people into picking up bills blocking the way of the persuing police. Or just drop them on the trading floor of the NYSE...
Eat at Joe's.
High rez PDFs of Monopoly money from Hasbro.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
If banks want electronic payments so badly, THEY CAN STOP CHARGING A MONTHLY FEE FOR ELECTRONIC BILL PAYMENT! To be fair, a lot of credit card companies don't -- but who wants to go to each different credit card site to pay those bills? And that still leaves the other bills.