Dailydave mailing list archives
Re: Tracking printed docs: EFF examines codes printed on docs
From: Adam Shostack <adam () homeport org>
Date: Tue, 18 Oct 2005 16:22:40 -0400
I have lots of links at http://www.emergentchaos.com/archives/001762.html Adam On Tue, Oct 18, 2005 at 04:01:44PM -0400, Xu He wrote: | | There was an article a few years ago about the anti-counterfeiting feature in | the new Euro and new US 20 Dollar. Just can't seem to find the link. To | summarize it from what I remember, there are tiny yellow "o" or zero's in the | new currencies that's of the same size (1mm). When someone tries to zerox one | of these bills, the color printer will stop working after a number of | attempts. Take a look at the back of the 20 dollar bill, and you will see that | the '2' and '0' are of looks like different type of fonts. | | | On 10/17/05, Jon O. <jono () networkcommand com> wrote: | | | http://www.eff.org/Privacy/printers/wp.php | | On Nov. 22, 2004, PC World published an article stating that "several | printer companies quietly encode the serial number and the manufacturing | code of their color laser printers and color copiers on every document | those machines produce. Governments, including the United States, already | use the hidden markings to track counterfeiters." According to the article, | the high fidelity of outputs from color machines to their original | documents suggests that counterfeiters can potentially succeed in creating | high-quality counterfeited currency and government documents using these | machines. At the request of the United States Secret Service, manufacturers | developed mechanisms that print in an encoded form the serial number and | the manufacturer's name as indiscernible markings on color documents. The | Secret Service and manufacturers would be able to decode these values from | the markings and in the event a color machine was used to print a suspected | counterfeited document, these values would be used with customer | information to discover the identity of the machine's owner. | | [see link above for more info] | | | |
Current thread:
- Tracking printed docs: EFF examines codes printed on docs Jon O. (Oct 17)
- Re: Tracking printed docs: EFF examines codes printed on docs Xu He (Oct 18)
- Re: Tracking printed docs: EFF examines codes printed on docs Adam Shostack (Oct 18)
- Re: Tracking printed docs: EFF examines codes printed on docs Xu He (Oct 18)