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New Technique Could Trace Documents By Printer
An anonymous reader submits "From this article at Purdue News, 'Researchers at Purdue University have developed a method that will enable authorities to trace documents to specific printers, a technique law-enforcement agencies could use to investigate counterfeiting, forgeries and homeland security matters.' The neat thing is that they are exploiting the characteristics of the print process itself to identify the printer." <update> One of the folks e-mailed me to say that the HP LaserJet 9000dn was one of the big ones tested with.
Sure, it sounds nice for the gov't to track down bad guys, but what if the technology to do this becomes public? Most of the /. population won't be able to pass notes to girls without them finding out who its from!!!
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
They got the memo about cover letters on their TPS Reports.
Michalangelo Progr
The technique uses two methods to trace a document: first, by analyzing a document to identify characteristics that are unique for each printer, and second by designing printers to purposely embed individualized characteristics in documents.
Sorry to rain on your parade, Homeland Security, but if counterfeiters can counterfeit hard currency worth a damn, they can certainly hack a printer to make it quickly change configurations at the drop of a hat. Get your marker and bic pens ready, all ye counterfeiters!
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
The problem here is many of the peices they would use to track the printers are integral parts of the replacable toner cartridges and printer ink kits. Only printers that have perm drums and heads will be easily traceable.
....I use to use one of those automatic birds that would carve the letters into the stone tablets, but the cost of replacement beaks was very high (and BTW, only use OEM beaks, 3rd party beaks void your bird warranty)
"Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
Then maybe they can finally track those unverifiable CBS documents back to Karl Rove.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
"DOCUMENTS PRODUCED BY BUSINESS MACHINES
It goes without saying that the proliferating market of modern business technology
such as copiers, fax machines and printers reduces a systematic forensic approach.
However, a number of projects report progress in the following:
Classification of full colour copiers
Doherty (31) gives an overview on state-of-the-art classification of ink-jet printers
and inks. Interestingly, the findings indicate that the results of TLC analysis
"before" and "after" show significant differences because the ink-components are
modified by heat during the print process. For specialists in traditional typewriting
examination, the overview of Frensel (41) on typewriters produced in the former
East Germany is of interest when identifying products manufactured before and
after World War II. Gervais & Lindblom (43) present a case illustrating detection of
digital manipulation on a facsimile printout. Hammond (47) compares the collected
technical data of facsimile machines. The demonstration of secondary typewriting
and alterations by the use of grids is today easily carried out by using the
appropriate computer software, as shown by Hicks (55). If there are actually
different computer assisted typewriting data collections, the system DRUIDE,
developed by Holzapfel & Marx (58) is comprehensive and designed for routine
casework. The traditional typewriter - disappearing on the market - still has its
forensic impact. Few references go back to the roots of typewriting examination and
commercial production, e.g., in the former Eastern Block. Horton (60) compares the
identifiability of the flatbed scanner and its products by comparing the marks on
scanned images. Lauterbach (68) describes 30 fax machines and their characteristic
printouts for identification purposes. A survey by Tweedy (129) on state-of-the-art
colour Laser copier identification by bitmap coding includes an overview of
counterfeit protection by the characteristics and class of the major copying
machines on the market. Wagner (134) presents the "Australian Toner Library" and
the discriminating power of FTIR as compared to ATR. In a similar direction, but
looking more specifically at the dating and sourcing of the Transmitting Terminal
Identifier on a fax document, is a study by Westwood & Novotny (138). White et al
(139) show the benefits of Surface Enhanced Resonance RAMAN Scattering
Spectroscopy (SERRS) for an almost non-destructive spectroscopic examination of
inks. Winter (141) studied the evidential value of the dot pattern of colour ink-jet
and bubble-jet printers for individual identification."
http://www.interpol.int/Public/Forensic/IFSS/meet
sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.
I recall a Brady Bunch episode where Alice was typing letters and sending them to Jan to make her feel special. She was feeling overlooked, being the middle daughter and all. Well the Bradys traced the letters back to Alice's typewriter because it dropped its Y's. Not sure what all of this means, but it seems ontopic.
As far as those who are concerned about the government secretly tracking them down by the printer signatures in their anonymous manifestoes I think there are other things to worry about from the government.
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
Xerox (and others, I'm sure) have done this for quite some time.
About 5 or 6 years ago a friend that owned a print shop and used a Xerox color laser printer told me about Xerox imprinting every print with a watermark that could be decoded to obtain the serial number of the actual machine used in the printing.
The watermark was undetectable to the human eye and didn't alter the presentation of the image.
They did this at the behest of the government because it's so easy to print money on these things. This way they can track the money back to the machine via the serial number.
Lose Weight and Feel Great with Isagenix
So basically, they are saying if they had the original printer, and the document they could put the two together.
In order for this to provide the means to track a forged document to it's source will require printers to be "tested" when sold so their "printing fingerprint" can be recorded.
Otherwise, at best if can serve as a confirmation, not a tracing method. This is how ballistic characteristics test are used. They are used to confirm that a gun fired a bullet, not to trace the bullet to the gun.
My Suburban burns less gasoline than your Prius.
Ok, you are so full of shit you stink from here.
your printers are incapable of printing less than it's maximum dpi. and no laser or inkjet let alone a dye-sublimation printer is capable of microscopic printing.
nice of you to make up crap, but let's at least make it slightly believeable.
show me a proof before you start throwing about lies as truth. Espically when it goes against physics and mechanical capabilities.
Things like this are troublesome, though:
One document obtained by the AP, a 1998 U.S. government business solicitation, mandated that "any color printer must include a tracing system that encodes system identification in any output. This will tie the output to the originating equipment so that forensic identification of the equipment is possible in the event of illegal printing of currency images due to failure or circumvention of the recognition system(s)...."
In a number of contracts where the US government has bought printers, they've required tracing features to be present-- effectively forcing them to be in printers sold to the general public as well. So effectively, many color printers are embedding their serial number in output documents. (And this is a lot more damaging-- saying this particular printer made a particular document, rather than a Epson Stylus 700).
Does anyone beleive that if these devices make it to market, the "evil doers" are going to rush right out to the store and buy a printer with a "Homeland Security Inside" sticker on it? And then properly register it? Anyone with serious criminal intent is either going to use a non-equiped printer, or a printer which is stolen or misleadingly registered.
Don't get me wrong, this is kinda cool, and I'm sure it will help for things like kidnappings, but "Homeland Security"? Give me a break.
Jefferson is rolling over in his grave.
He told us this story (BTW, I have no idea if it is true.) about how all photocopiers in the USSR had a serial number etched on the glass so the copies it made could be traced. Much easier to track down papers proclaiming the joys of Liberty I guess.
Well, that teacher has past on but I really wonder what he'd think of all this? All kidding aside is the US starting to look a little like the old USSR?
"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity but they've always worked for me" - HST