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'Uncrackable' Document and Product Security?
Curunculus writes "The Engineer reports that a unique 'fingerprint' formed by microscopic surface imperfections on almost all paper documents, plastic cards and product packaging could be used as a cheaper method to combat fraud.
One of the developers, Professor Cowburn commented: "The beauty of this system is that there is no need to modify the item being protected in any way with tags, chips or inks; it's as if documents and packaging have their own unique DNA. This makes protection covert, low-cost, simple to integrate into the manufacturing process and immune to attacks against the security feature itself."
This system is now being commercialised via Ingenia Technology, a spin off company."
Wouldn't this technology still be vulnerable to current problems? Things like where somebody steals your card, or records the data being sent/received whether it's from a computer or some machine somewhere.
Death by snoo-snoo!
Looks like flat bed scanners are gonna have a new use! And here I am stuck with my shitty handheld.
So ... regular handling changes the surface, eh? Or fold, drop it by mistake, write a note on another piece of paper on top of the document, put it in a file cabinet and press it between other documents or bend the edges cramming it in, pass it around so iother people can read it, mail it and handling mucks with it, it gets crammed into a mailbox with other documents ... heck, you scan it before putting it into an envelope, but you have to fold it to put it in the envelope ...
Infuriate left and right
"Well Mr. Random, while it is quite unusual to see a tax rebate check of *ahem* eleventy-billion dollars, the article passed all verification checks. We've deposited the amount into your account. Have a nice day."
You're not supposed to point out the elephants in the middle of the room. Just play along and be nice. And remember to bring plenty of peanuts.
Well, actually I didn't read the linked FA yet, but I read about this same thing elsewhere a few days ago. They said the chances of two peices of the same kind of paper have the same signature were 1:1000. Two reams of paper and you're in (or 1,000 peices of passport plastic, or whatever). Hardly an effort considering the documents they're considering using it on. Unless they can bump that number into the billions or more, it's pointless because it's too easy to manufacture a duplicate of any given document that has an identical fingerprint just by brute force.
11*43+456^2
i think that our optical resoulution has come far enough to make this technology viable. think about it, if you can analyse the document on a suitably small scale, i'm sure there aren't two pieces of anything (be it plastic paper, whatever!) that are exacltly alike!
the benefits of something like this could be amazing applied to passports or even checks. analysing the materials themselves could counter fraud on almost any kind of document.
of course there is still one problem. the database that contains the document makeup information could ultimately be broken into and the data changed.
but in comparison to our current techniques for fraud prevention, i think this is a big leap.
don't know who said it but "there is no lock that can't be broken" still holds true. locks are a setback, an inconvenience to those wanting to get in.
is it to have a name like "Cowburn" AND be a professor? I wonder if he likes hamburgers?
Professor Cowburn. Say it. It just rooollls off your tongue!
... scratch the surface? The card or document's unique surface changes right? Doesn't plastic bend, and get smoother the more you use it? Paper can get worn, torn, or crumpled. Interesting notion, but I think practicalities are going to cause problems for this technology. They will need to ensure this technology is people-proof, and that it is durable.
New tag!
Yeah, right.
Didn't I see this on CSI already?
try { Signature mysig = new CleverAttempt(); } catch(NonCleverSignatureException e) { postanyway(); }
There was a similar article in June about uniquely identifying Torah scrolls to discourage theft. This relied on inter-character gaps, paper tears, etc. to generate a unique document signature.
enough said.
- 1 sample for every cm^2 of document
- A4 sized documents.
- Capability to register up to 1 trillion documents
</ASSUME>Now, on with the math. First, we figure out how many samples we're going to possibly accomodate, as an address space:
Total surface area (21.0 cm * 29.7 cm * 10 E^12) * 1 Sample / cm^2 --> 623,700,000,000,000 Samples
This results in a 50 bit address space, if we were able to just sequentially number the samples. Since we have to work with what we're given, lets just assume we can get by with 256 bits/sample.
This results in the need to store (256 bits sample) * (1 byte / 8 bits) * (21 cm * 29.7 cm / document) * (1 sample / cm^2) --> 19958.4 bytes/ document.
So, in order for this to work we need to store about 20k/page. In order to authenticate documents, your stored database would be approximately 20 Gigabytes/ million documents, and indexing isn't going to help much.
That's a lot of work, and it seems to me it would be quicker, easier, and far more efficient in general to store duplicates of the originals in a secure location.
--Mike--
Recreating a tracked surface wouldn't be anywhere near as difficult as, say, cracking a huge RSA thumbprint, so this isn't good enough for authentication. Destroying the surface would be as easy as a microwave or bleach, so it's no good for permanent identification.
Remind me what this is good for again?
StoneCypher is Full of BS