
How printers and Photoshop detect and refuse to process images of currency - kibwen
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~sjm217/projects/currency/
======
pionar
When I was in college (99-2000ish, maybe?), one of my roommates was an art
major with a graphic design bent, and he had this high end printer and would
copy and print $1 bills and take 20 at a time over to the vending machines
around the corner from our apartments once a week or so. After about a month
of doing this, the machines disappeared.

Of course, he's the same roommate who later got arrested for wire fraud and
grand theft.

~~~
thirdsight
Similar. A friend of mine used an epson stylus printer (new on the market
then) and a scanner to copy £20 notes. They were inserted into the change
machine in the local gambling arcade type place. It was stupid enough to
accept a single sided copy.

Out popped pound coins.

He now works for GCHQ which is funny.

Edit: just to add that these change machines were really naff and obviously
built by the lowest bidder.

~~~
alextingle
> He now works for GCHQ which is funny.

So he just moved on to even more serious crimes.

~~~
thirdsight
Yep. Considering the recent news etc, he is the proverbial laughing stock.

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wyager
This is one of the things that made me really see the value of free software.

I did verify experimentally that the Eurion constellation alone doesn't
trigger photoshop's image rejection algorithm. I think it would be fun to
distribute a bunch of images that false-positive the digimarc algorithms, just
to mess with people.

~~~
logfromblammo
They _could_ add the detection to GIMP. But then that would reveal what the
algorithm is. And that would allow specific strategies for producing false
negatives or false positives.

I'm still undecided about whether countermeasures to reverse engineering like
this are useful or not in the long run.

~~~
atmosx
These measures can stop a _kid_ from counterfeiting. That's all they do. I'm
sure in the process they could create some kind of sporadic troubles to
designers which paid for the expensive software.

You can't possibly think that a criminal organization, with average tech
resources, will have a hard time getting around this in a way or another.

~~~
logfromblammo
It wouldn't even stop a kid. It would only stop the technically incompetent.

But that's the whole point. If you can stop the idiots from copying notes, you
have a lot fewer potential counterfeiters to deal with.

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Timmmmbob
"Ah! I remember reading the original web page from years and years ago about
_the fact that this happens_. I wonder if they've discovered _how_ they do it
now (the algorithm). I will click on this presumably new (on a news site) link
that says 'how'. WTF? It's just the same old page from 2004!"

------
cheeseprocedure
On a related note: many colour printers leave a tiny encoded pattern on each
page (based on model/serial/etc), ostensibly to help track counterfeiters. [1]
[2]

Unfortunately, they're printed all the time.

[1] [https://www.eff.org/pages/list-printers-which-do-or-do-
not-d...](https://www.eff.org/pages/list-printers-which-do-or-do-not-display-
tracking-dots)

[2] [https://www.eff.org/issues/printers](https://www.eff.org/issues/printers)

~~~
aestra
Perhaps also for forensics in case of other crimes as well.

~~~
alextingle
The main use is to identify leakers.

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krapp
When I used to make news graphics for a tv station, every now and then this
problem in Photoshop would arise and it was incredibly annoying to make
anything with a flat dollar bill as part of the background.

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MyNameIsMK
If this software is detecting currency, the obvious follow-up question we
should ask is: what else is it detecting, how does it do this, and why?

Could it be that each image generated from Adobe Software also tags the image
with unique identifying computer, timestamp information?

~~~
krapp
Given that Adobe is attempting to move their software over to their Creative
Cloud service, then that is probably quite possible now.

Beyond that, I think the bigger threat to privacy by far in digital images is
in EXIF data and reverse image searches.

~~~
X4
Yup, that + what happens when it crashes? I wonder, if a network packet is
sent somewhere.

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elliottcarlson
This has been around for a lot longer then the article (from 2009) suggests.
High end publishing printers had a lock-down mechanism built in as early as
the late 90's when you attempted to print US currency.

As mentioned in this comment thread, there is a general description of the
security features on newmoney.gov - while I was working on the original
version of newmoney.gov for the release of the new $20 bill, we were given
high DPI scans of the new bill and were only allowed to make low DPI, specific
crops - all while in a "war room" that did not have internet access nor were
we allowed to bring in any cameras or cellphones.

Some interesting little facts I was told while working with the BEP: most
counterfeits are actually done by other countries with proper currency
printing machines. Small time counterfeiting is generally bleached out $1
bills printed over with $5 images to retain the same cotton-paper ratio used
so that it feels the same.

------
X4
So much details on a note makes me wonder, if a message could be
steganographed within notes.

Something like: _If you can see this: Call 1-800-FED_

~~~
nappy-doo
Fun fact: The treasury department won't tell you what is actually on the
bills. In fact, none of the governments will. You can analyze them till you're
blue in the face, under whatever light or circumstances you want, but the
treasury department won't tell you what security measures are on the bill, nor
when they change them. Additionally, they sometimes change during print runs,
and issues.

~~~
dsl
Fun fact: you are asking the wrong branch of the government.

The Secret Service will happily tell you about security features of currency,
and behind closed doors help you build methods to detect counterfeits if you
have a reasonable justification.

[http://www.secretservice.gov/know_your_money.shtml](http://www.secretservice.gov/know_your_money.shtml)

~~~
nappy-doo
The secret service is under the treasury dept.

~~~
danso
They used to be under the Treasury Dept. They are now under the Dept. of
Homeland Security:

[http://www.dhs.gov/department-components](http://www.dhs.gov/department-
components)

~~~
nappy-doo
TIL

------
midas007
Most color printers print their serial number on every page to assist in
identification of forgeries.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printer_steganography](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printer_steganography)

------
leeoniya
seems like something that can be bypassed by patching a couple jumps in asm
with the help of IDA and a cup o' joe.

~~~
yapcguy
GIMP... and enjoy the coffee.

~~~
BrownBuffalo
Exactly. Why is anything useful done, has to be done on a *nix? Oh wait ...
that's how things GET DONE.

~~~
aaronem
_There 's_ a sales pitch -- "Need to counterfeit money? Use Linux!"

~~~
mhurron
It's been done, basically

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LsxmQV8AXk](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LsxmQV8AXk)

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blah32497
Does anyone have any insight into why Adobe and printer companies actually
care about this? Are they being paid to do it by the secret service? (and
wouldn't that be public information?)

~~~
Theodores
Digimarc wrote the software for the Central Bank Counterfeit Deterrence Group.
News of this was reported in 2004:

[http://news.cnet.com/2100-1012-5138816.html](http://news.cnet.com/2100-1012-5138816.html)

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ChikkaChiChi
What bothered me in the other thread where I first learned this is that while
I have always understood that I don't have a reasonable expectation of privacy
on the Internet, I feel dirty as shit when I realize my computer determines
when something is legal or not for me to do.

Slippery slope, this one.

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aortega
The algorithm that the author is painfully searching by brute-forcing a
picture is hidden by simply compilation. Decompilation of a binary was hard in
the 20th century, not so much now. Discovering the exact algorithm only
requires some time and some skills.

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ironmanjakarta
Yeah, gotta stop those evil counterfeiters. But not the Fed. Even though
they've counterfeited 100s of trillions over the last 100 years. :P

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whoopdedo
In the distortion samples, the uri for orig.png redirects to a non-existent
server.

