Cheap Scanners Can "Fingerprint" Paper

carusoj writes "Researchers at Princeton University and University College London say they can identify unique information, essentially like a fingerprint, from any blank sheet of paper using any reasonably good scanner. The technique could be used to crack down on counterfeiting or even keep track of confidential documents. The researchers' paper on the finding is set to be presented at an IEEE security conference in Oakland, Calif., in May." Update: 03/10 22:43 GMT by T : J. Alex Halderman, Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Michigan and one of the authors of the study, writes with more: "My group has just put up a site about the work and a copy of the full paper, and we will probably add a video later tonight."

Comments

Re:Not *actual* fingerprints

[Ninnle Labs, LLC]

No shit, sherlock, hence the use of scare quotes around fingerprint.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scare_quotes

Scare quotes is a term for a particular use of quotation marks. In this application the quotation marks are placed around a single word or phrase, and they indicate that the word or phrase does not signify its literal or conventional meaning but should be interpreted with one of the alternative meanings described below.