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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."
Features that act like fingerprints.
Things like fiber arrangement, etc
Check out my sysadmin blog!
Professional counterfeiters won't be deterred by this. It'll only catch the teenagers that try to print twenty dollar bills to pay for their school lunches. Much like how Photoshop won't edit files with a certain shade of green, or how ink jet printers embed a unique identifier in the yellow ink output. *shrug* It's amusing that most counterfeit money comes from Iran from a pair of printing presses that are identical to the ones used here in the United States, yet there's all this effort on trying to curb production from Joe Average. Most real threats come from sophisticated operations like that, and require a team to combat. This is nothing more than a novelty.
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You must not have been arrested recently. I was picked up on an ancient traffic ticket about 4 years ago, and they used an optical scanner to take fingerprints, so there was no ink. Of course, the scanner tended to mess up a lot if your fingers were sweaty due to, say, just having been arrested, so getting fingerprinted was an ordeal in itself.
That being said, though, this article seems to be more about getting identifiable fingerprints OF a piece of paper, not getting a person's fingerprints FROM a piece of paper. I'm not sure I see the use case in this, since companies don't maintain fingerprint records of the paper they sell, and doing so would be impractical given how much paper is produced on a daily basis.
"A drug company like Pfizer, for example, could take fingerprints of their labels when they are shipped, and this data could be verified later by a government or company representative in order to spot fakes."
In times people consciously order fake viagra or fake diet pills this might not help.
This won't stop money counterfeiters from creating money. Even if you added some kind of barcode that contained the fingerprint of the paper to every bill, the overhead to scan the bill would make it worthwhile only to large bills, so the counterfeiters stick to small bills. Or they reverse the fingerprint process and print valid barcodes on the bills they counterfeit.
But in terms of tracking objects, it's a great idea. If a document winds up in the wrong hands and the authorities recover it, they could then trace it back to its origins. Take it a step further and apply the concept to other objects. Maybe use xrays on components of a car to help ID stolen parts. Cost of implementation would make this work only with very high-end autos. Maybe something similar for weapons? Serial numbers can be filed down, but changing the unique composition of the metal would require a bit more work.
The best thing is it works with existing items, so you don't have to force people to buy new items for the system to work.
HP released a palm-held page scanner that you would wipe across the paper like a squeegee. It would scan the text and assemble the entire page based upon the unique grain pattern in the paper. The market didn't understand the concept, wasn't ready for a briefcase document scanner, whatever the case was, but it failed and was withdrawn from market.
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
Or you could be an idiot, as I was as a kid, and wonder if the car lighter actually gets hot. Then have concentric rings for a fingerprint for the next month :P
Less commitment than MIB, but also less alien slaying.
Your sig is making me more than a little curious about what you were arrested for.
The researchers' paper on the finding is set to be presented at an IEEE security conference in Oakland, Calif., in May.
After a high resolution scan, it turns out this is not the researchers' paper after all.
i was fingerprinted when i got a bartenders license. they had me use hand sanitizer to moisten my fingertips when i used the optical scanner and it gave a better read.
The more I think about this less than astonishing breakthrough, the less sense it makes to me. It seems to me that, as described, the technique is useful only in proving that a piece of paper is identical to itself. Unless you're fascinated by tautologies, this is not exactly exciting; furthermore, none of the uses cited in the article seem plausible.
For example, how could this technique be used to detect counterfeit currency? As everyone who has ever thought of combining a 20 dollar bill and a Xerox machine knows, just copying the bill doesn't produce a convincing fake, because the mint uses special paper to print currency. Is the author of this article suggesting that we scan every bill that's printed, file the scans by serial number, then scan every bill that's spent, and compare the scan against the database? Even comparing only suspect bills seems impractical to me—besides, if the counterfeit is that good, not even the government wants to know.
The pharmaceutical label verification is equally ludicrous. Remember, you'd have to authenticate each particular label against the database to verify it. This is nuts. You don't just rely on the label to authenticate lab-grade products—you rely on procedures that include traces, accountability, and a documented chain of custody. If we're talking aspirin, then the cost would be ludicrously out of proportion to the gain. If we're really worried, say if we're dealing with plutonium or something, then we're not going to rely on a silly label for authentication. How do we know the label isn't real, and the stuff in the container was stolen in transit, and something else substituted?
Could we imagine a case where it would make sense to use this scanning method to verify the authenticity of a document? Say we have a very, very, important document. We want to make sure it doesn't get swapped out for a fake document that looks just like it? Aside from the question of why it would matter, I'd have to ask: which is more vulnerable to malicious tampering—a paper document or a database record?
There might be applications to this technology, but if so, the article isn't telling us.
Great men are almost always bad men--Lord Acton's Corollary