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rrwood writes "This is an intriguing insight into the activities of a master Canadian counterfeiter. The subject of the article, Wesley Weber, is/was a distinguished hacker and cracker who used a combination of technological skills and social engineering to produce what is probably the highest-quality counterfeit currency ever detected in Canada. Even more interesting to note is the widescale effect this one guy had, since he and his confederates single-handedly managed to force businesses to stop accepting $100CDN bills, thus affecting literally millions of people. The story is a fascinating look at his brief career, and the dumb, shortsighted mistakes ultimately responsible for his downfall."
So this is filed under the YRO category because....?
Or is counterfeiting another one of those things t3h 3v1l g0v3rnm3n7 is trying to take away?
"People that quote themselves in their signatures bother me" - athakur999
At least it's harder to make Canadian money, with all the colours, than the green USD.
Pretty hard to find stores that take $100 bills these days around here, but the article notes that acceptance is improving, that counterfeit money is quite rare (1 bill per 290 people) ... and that new bill technology is making it harder and harder...
Also points out that the vast majority of people are lazy, don't look at the bills, and that frequently even really bad copies will be accepted from time to time...
Platform independent bug tracking software
highest-quality counterfeit currency ever detected
Yeah those who do better are never detected. He is still not good enough obviously.
Can you ping me now?... Good!
"Highest-quality counterfeit currency ever detected"
Is that anything like "America's greatest solved mysteries" ?Two problems plague countries that face high rates of counterfeit currency. First, the expense of putting new currency into the publics hands is large enough without having to worry about pulling old currency. As long as older bills are around, people can counterfeit them and expect places to accept them should they slip past the meager, if any at all, counterfeit detection most stores employ. Iraq recently went through a currency exchange program and it was utter chaos. The Apocalypse would be far more orderly if they tried something like that in the US.
The second problem is where currency is counterfeited. The US's biggest problem with counterfeit currency isn't in the states, it's overseas and in some countries in South and Central America. Many drug cartels in Columbia have been caught counterfeiting US currency as well. These countries lack the knowledge and/or ability to properly detect counterfeit US currency and it's not until the money is eventually transferred to US banks that it's caught.
I highly recommend RTFAing. It's a good story, and lots of juicy techy details.
The biggest problem, it seems to me, is that whatever technical features they introduce to protect banknotes, it doesn't do a damn bit of good unless every high-school dropout grocery clerk can use those features effectively to identify bad notes. You could have forty kinds of anti-counterfeiting devices on a note, but unless the public can easily and quickly use those features, they aren't going to help.
This got me started thinking on using crypto to protect banknotes--try embedding an RFID-type device into every banknote, with a simple chip that can perform a SHA-1 signing back-ending the RFID mechanism. An RF device sends a random number to the bill, which receives that number and SHA-1 signs it, and returns the signature. If you put the same private key into all of the bills, you could build relatively simple, hand-held currency scanners that all have the public key and can verify that the bill is real.
This has its problems:
1) Can we actually build a chip/RF mechanism small enough and robust enough to be used in paper currency?
2) I can imagine this kind of mechanism adding a lot of expense to the note manufacturing process.
3) In order to use this, you'd have to distribute gazillions of RF scanners to the point-of-sale. Expensive, and not fast to get that kind of gadget penetration.
4) Tamper-resistence: you have to build the SHA-1 chips so that they can't be broken open. This is similar to the MS Trusted Computing issue--is it possible to store a key in a physical device such that the key cannot be extracted physically?
That last problem is the worst--it's a lot like the DVD CSS encryption scheme problem. It works find until ONE INSTANCE of the private key gets broken, and then everybody has the key to every single banknote in circulation. And then the whole thing is kaput, money down the drain (literally). So it would be awfully important to solve the tamper-proofing issue, before you went ahead with this idea.
Shit, I gotta get a girlfriend--posting coherent ideas to Slashdot at 11 on a Friday night is pretty busted.
Why should it be illegal? I don't agree with any law that says that I must be forced to sell to you (which is essentially what you are saying). It is my business and my choice whether I let you pay for a $2 candy bar with a $100 bill. Now if I chose to not sell to you because of race, color or creed then you might have a case.
If $50 or $100 is all you've got then you head over to an ATM and get some twenties. You can find those easily in the industralized world, right? No reason for the guy behind the register in the convenience store to have to assume the added risk of having hundreds of dollars in the till. You're not the only one for which it can be an issue of safety, you know?
As a business man, why should I do business with you if I don't want to? Maybe I'm not so desparate or greedy that I need your money. Don't be so self-centred!
It shoudln't be.. a business should be free to accept or refuse whatever terms of barter they like.
Why should any merchant have to accept anything? You have no contract with them; you are free to take your business elsewhere. They don't OWE you anything... that's the whole point. If the terms of the deal aren't favorable.. either party can refuse. If you don't like it, you can take your business to someone else who has more favorable ways of doing business. If your opinion is shared by many, then the merchant who serves you better will do well.
Legal tender counts towards paying off debts.. that's it. You cannot refuse to take payment of money owed to you if it's in the legal tender, and the exact amount. If you do, a court won't be sympathetic.
I think it should be compulsory for utilities to accept cash for payment of bills.. but that should be handled as a regulation on utilities, and not on the use of currency itself.
All the criminals you hear about are dumb? They all do something stupid to get caught. The smart ones are the ones you'll never hear about. Maybe their crime will get coverage but you'll never hear the name.
I'm sure there are some smart one out there, but I've never heard of them.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
It's ALWAYS detected. The thing is money has serial numbers and those are tracked. So, even if you print counterfit bills that are 100% identicle to real ones (nearly impossible) you'll either being coliding with existing serial numbers, or using ones that aren't valid. This'll get notied if you do it in any sort of reasonable scale.
It's the same thing as why there are no usable keygens for MMORPGs. It's not that the crackers can't reverse the algoithm for the keys, that's trivial. Problem is any key you generate will either be one that hasn't yet been issued, and therefore is invalid on the servers (most likely), or one that has been issued, and thus can't be used again.