
What Happens When You Try to Photoshop Money - michaelpinto
http://hyperallergic.com/195922/what-happens-when-you-try-to-photoshop-money/
======
weinzierl
As far as I know many countries use Digimarc for their money.

EDIT: Here is a source:

    
    
        Recent versions of image editors such as Adobe 
        Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro refuse to print banknotes. 
        According to Wired.com, the banknote detection code in 
        these applications, called the Counterfeit Deterrence 
        System (CDS), was designed by the Central Bank 
        Counterfeit Deterrence Group and supplied to companies 
        such as Adobe as a binary module. However, 
        experiments by Steven J. Murdoch and others showed that 
        this banknote detection code does not rely on the 
        EURion pattern. It instead detects a digital 
        watermark embedded in the images, developed by 
        Digimarc.
    

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation)

An interesting hack is that this Digimarc pattern could be used for a Copy
Attack [1]. To my knowledge the mark is not tied to the image of the bank note
in any way. So in short: You could extract the Digimarc pattern and apply it
to any other document, which then in turn could not be edited by mentioned
software.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copy_attack](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copy_attack)

~~~
userbinator
The fact that the watermark detection algorithm doesn't seem to require a
tremendous amount of processing power unlike most image processing/detection
algorithms - apparently it's present in scanners and photocopiers too -
implies that it could also be embedded in camera firmware, making it very
possible to produce cameras that refuse to take pictures of certain things...
I find that more unsettling since scanners/photocopiers are somewhat more
specialist equipment today, whereas practically everyone has at least one
camera. Imagine not being able to take a picture of something crucial like a
crime in progress because there happened to be something watermarked present
in the scene. That's why I don't believe in leaving these types of moral
decisions to the machine.

I think it's only the legal issues that keep people from RE'ing the algorithm
and generating obviously-non-banknote images which get detected, in a similar
spirit to this:

[http://news.cornell.edu/stories/2015/03/images-fool-
computer...](http://news.cornell.edu/stories/2015/03/images-fool-computer-
vision-raise-security-concerns)

As the watermark detection algorithm is not that resource-intensive, I would
guess that a false positive is even easier to produce.

~~~
Lawtonfogle
Wait, so you are against the new PROTECT system that scans all images for
signs of child sexual abuse and blocks and reports any images containing those
signs? Why do you love child abuse images so much? Why are you protecting
child molesters? Are you are a pedophile?

All said with a /s, but with a serious question. What happens when we reach a
point where the software and hardware exist to do this? Many hosting providers
are already doing something similar as well. I believe they work by taking a
image hash and comparing it to a known database, but the newer hashes work
even as the images are slowly modified.

Would there be any way to stand against this trend without being demonized?

~~~
userbinator
Similar is the argument that anyone who wants privacy/freedom is either a
criminal, terrorist, or hacker (cracker)... but "think of the children" evokes
such an emotive response among most of the population that it's difficult to
counter.

I'm just glad we're not at the level of "open-source image processing software
and hardware enables banknote counterfeiting" yet...

------
jrockway
I like how the workaround is to open the file with The Gimp and export to psd.
Then Photoshop will open it fine.

I'm assuming this is a case of "the suits told us it couldn't import
banknotes", so they made it not import banknotes. Banknotes that were already
imported... well you didn't say anything about that.

(The same thing happened for the DVD encryption. Someone asked an engineer for
encryption. The engineer just happened to have made it easy to bruteforce the
key, negating the entire point of the encryption.)

Remember: you're the software engineer -- write the software you want, not the
software you think someone wants you to write.

~~~
jacquesm
> Remember: you're the software engineer -- write the software you want, not
> the software you think someone wants you to write.

That's easier said than done, kudos to those that pull that off but there is
this thing called code review and if your co-workers are halfway competent
you'll get called on what you built. In some cases that can be a career
limiting move.

Better to pick your employers so that you don't end up as an enabler of
technology used against the public interest.

Of course if you're going to 'take one for the team' and purposefully gain
employment somewhere for the sole reason of messing with the machine that's a
laudable strategy but it will likely come at a price in the longer term.

~~~
gliese1337
Figuring out how to manipulate the Someone so that they want you to write what
you want to write- or at least _tell_ you to write what you want to write, or
to compromise on writing something _closer_ to what you wanted to write- seems
a useful strategy for mitigating those risks.

I have recent relevant experience in this regard. I'm working on a system for
university-level language professors, a large part of which is making it easy
for them to use videos for homework assignments. We recently had a meeting
with one of the university's copyright lawyers to ensure that the video
delivery system was sufficiently "safe", and they'd be legally protected from
being sued for copyright violations when professors want to use films in their
classes.

We quickly discovered that, if we explained things well enough that the
copyright lawyer was capable of understanding how decrypted video ended up on
the students' screens, and thus how a sufficiently tech-savvy student might
possibly pirate it, they would freak out and insist we Do Something More. The
obvious solution: stop explaining how things work, 'cause this is just making
more work for ourselves. Tell them "other people used this thing and didn't
get sued", and deflect all technical questions, on the other hand, and they
leave us alone and let us work on something reasonable.

------
jimlei
They mention this was "discovered three years ago", but I was sure I
remembered this from years back.

"Adobe adds algorithms to Photoshop that prevent users from opening or
printing scanned money. While we've been aware of this feature for quite a
while" Posted by Craig Swanson on May 14, 2006 07:03 PM
[http://www.creativetechs.com/iq/how_to_use_scanned_money_in_...](http://www.creativetechs.com/iq/how_to_use_scanned_money_in_adobe_photoshop.html)

edit: seems to be more info here, from 2004. Latest Photoshop version contains
anti-counterfeit measures [http://www.geek.com/news/latest-photoshop-version-
contains-a...](http://www.geek.com/news/latest-photoshop-version-contains-
anti-counterfeit-measures-555286/)

~~~
f055
I encountered this error in 2005 on a Photoshop version that was 2 or 3 years
old. Also, back then you could mirror the scanned bill in some other app and
it would open fine in PS. It is funny how this is still front page news in
2015 :P

------
elwell
Here's a hi res image of a ten dollar bill. It's pretty cool:
[http://i.imgur.com/XInY8HI.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/XInY8HI.jpg)

~~~
semi-extrinsic
I'm not an expert by any means, but to me that looks too low-res to be useful
for printing money. Still cool though.

~~~
vacri
It depends on what you want to use it for. Australia currently has polymer
currency that means we've basically forgotten about counterfeiting, but before
that we had a $100 note that was greyscale with a bare whiff of colour. Not
the best design. You'd occasionally hear stories of people who'd simply
photocopy the bill on standard paper, scrunch it up to look used, then find a
sleepy clerk at a late night convenience store. Buy a couple of bucks worth of
stuff, leave with >$95 real change. You'd have to be pretty inattentive to be
fooled by it, but, well, humans have foibles...

~~~
josephagoss
Counterfeiting is unfortunately still a thing in Australia. A friend who runs
a cafe makes his staff subtly attempt to tear any $50 note they take due to
counterfeiting in the past.

They were caught out by scammers (or unknowing people with scammed notes)
several times last year and the bank rejected the notes (and of course
wouldn't hand them back)

Apparently the counterfeit notes are sometimes on a plastic too, but not
sturdy enough to withstand a quick tear. I'm not sure how long that will hold
true though.

~~~
vacri
I stand corrected. I knew there was still a little out there, but it sounds
like more than I thought. I remember doing retail in my mother's shop in the
paper note days and having to be moderately vigilant, and I've not seen retail
staff doing any routine sort of note-checking since the start of the polymer
days.

------
hammock
Related
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printer_steganography](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printer_steganography)

"Printer steganography is produced by laser printers, including Brother,
Canon, Dell, Epson, HP, IBM, Konica Minolta, Kyocera, Lanier, Lexmark, Ricoh,
Toshiba and Xerox, where tiny yellow dots are added to each page. The dots are
barely visible and contain encoded printer serial numbers and timestamps."

------
AndrewKemendo
Oh wow.

There is nothing preventing Adobe from implementing a script that auto
forwards your account details (Via Adobe Cloud!) to law enforcement if the CDS
detects money. That alone could easily be made into probable cause and based
on how easily warrants are being given nowadays, could easily lead to a no
knock warrant being issued.

~~~
lostlogin
I imagine the legal bill developing that scheme wouldn't be small as there are
quite a few countries laws to be considered. Here in NZ the way to get a
massively overreaching search warrant is just to say that the FBI are
interested, see Kim Ditcom.

------
akavel
The awesome article exploring and testing the protection mechanisms, with
pictures, from ~2009 (actually earlier probably, that's the "last modified"
date of the article):

[http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~sjm217/projects/currency/](http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~sjm217/projects/currency/)

(author notes his own earlier presentations on this topic starting 2004)

------
jerje
This is a good read.
[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation)
always wondered about performance if these apps are scanning every image for
this pattenrn

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
It's known to not be the EURion constellation that image software uses, it's
some secret proprietary mechanism. See
[http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~sjm217/projects/currency/](http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~sjm217/projects/currency/)
which is cited by the page.

~~~
13
Interestingly even Adobe doesn't know what it is, the detection software was
supplied to them as a binary. I messed around with it in a similar way to the
author out of sheer curiosity and ended up completely baffled by the whole
thing, even trying to eliminate parts that aren't triggers is impossible by my
measure. I should make it clear I have no desire whatsoever to thwart the
system (as others point out, simply using different software does that), but
the methods it is using seem to completely defy all of the fingerprinting
systems I'm aware of and is therefor incredibly interesting as a result.

~~~
toothbrush
This sounds like a job for an approach like [0]! Reminds me of [1].

0\. [http://lcamtuf.blogspot.fr/2014/11/pulling-jpegs-out-of-
thin...](http://lcamtuf.blogspot.fr/2014/11/pulling-jpegs-out-of-thin-
air.html), [http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/afl/](http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/afl/),
american fuzzy lop

1\. [http://news.cornell.edu/stories/2015/03/images-fool-
computer...](http://news.cornell.edu/stories/2015/03/images-fool-computer-
vision-raise-security-concerns), Images that fool computer vision

~~~
13
Doesn't AFL rely on being able to compile the application with it's hooks?
It's been a long time since I've messed with Photoshop, but it's a complete
mess of random dead code inside (even includes poems about a dead dog believe
it or not), chances are you're looking for a completely obfuscated bunch of
assembly in the hundred plus megabyte binary. I love Hopper, but not that
much.

~~~
toothbrush
Yes, you're right. I'm admittedly not at all an expert on this type of thing,
but surely some randomised testing, starting from a real banknote and making
small mutations, would be doable.

~~~
13
Oh sure, you could make a quick imagemagick script to make random variations
and get a pass/fail with AppleScript, or even do some exploring with a
debugger while opening one. Main barrier is motivation, I have no desire to
counterfeit money (and who would use PhotoShop for that anyway), so I decided
to let that rest.

~~~
toothbrush
It wouldn't be about counterfeiting, but about learning more about the
detection algo :)

~~~
13
I'm mostly concerned about experimenting straying into "reverse engineering".

~~~
JonnieCache
Indeed, the FBI are known to lack a sense of humor when it comes to funny
money.

~~~
mml
The secret service, even less so.

~~~
pakled_engineer
Just make sure you counterfeit so many bills they offer you a tiny punishment
in exchange for helping them track them down

[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2624697/Master-
count...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2624697/Master-
counterfeiter-printed-250million-fake-bills-walks-jail-just-month-half.html)

------
Grue3
This is why GIMP is superior. It doesn't impose what you can and cannot edit,
and never will.

~~~
davexunit
Yes, this is a good example of why Free Software is very important.

------
elliottlan
This jogged my memory - I remember these coming out in 2004:
Adobe_Photoshop_CS_Banknote_Patch-TiGER
Adobe_Photoshop_CS_v.8.01_Banknote_Patch-PARADOX

------
chiph
Photocopiers will keep a count of the number of attempts to copy currency, and
the copier leasing company tracks those numbers. I wonder if Photoshop does
the same.

~~~
driverdan
Source?

------
mg1982
I had no idea the spockyourfive thing was a thing, but I'm kind of glad it is.

Worth a look if any of this amused you:
[http://www.thepoke.co.uk/2014/08/05/10-banknotes-improved-
by...](http://www.thepoke.co.uk/2014/08/05/10-banknotes-improved-by-doodles/)

------
krick
Nothing new, and honestly I'm not so worried about Photoshop, as it's some
closed-source program, which does whatever it wants and has a bunch of good
alternatives anyway (well, for drawing purposes, at least, because I still
can't convince myself Gimp is usable).

What is much more disturbing: I still don't know if it's possible to find
hardware devices like scanner and printer, that do what they are intended to
do, and are not masking banknotes or leaving special marks on printed image.

------
digimarkup
I was just asking about this yesterday:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9309120](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9309120)

I would love to know how to manipulate images/documents to make it so that
photoshop won't open them and photocopiers won't copy them...

~~~
bwblabs
Would be funny to include
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation)
on websites, so you cannot make screenshots with Photoshop ;)

~~~
MichaelApproved
From the first paragraph of your link: "Research shows that the EURion
constellation is used for _color photocopiers_ and is likely not used for
computer software."

------
joeblau
I've tired to open the bills in the post and a few bills in this thread and
they all open with no problems in Affinity Designer [1].

[1] - [https://affinity.serif.com/](https://affinity.serif.com/)

------
TaylorGood
For a marketing campaign, "bonus cash" was the offer. An image that wouldn't
open in Photoshop was able to open in Illustrator, which, dragging that image
from Illustrator to Photoshop worked perfectly.

------
qnaal
I guess this is orthogonal to those little yellow circles?

~~~
spacemanmatt
They yellow dots watermark output with printer identification information. I
think this serves CDS, but has potential to be used/misused for so much more.

~~~
qnaal
Sorry, I forgot that the printer dots were lingering in the HN consciousness-
I was thinking of these things [0] (shown here [1] on the us $10, with little
ones next to them to give apparent visual purpose) which I've also seen on
non-currency things such as event/movie tickets iirc. Wikipedia suggests a
scanning-hardware focus of the circles, as opposed to the software focus of
the "Counterfeit Deterrence System" discussed in OP.

[0]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation)

[1] [http://i.imgur.com/XInY8HI.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/XInY8HI.jpg) left side

------
byuu
Added to Photoshop 8 (CS). It's a good thing it's completely impossible to run
Photoshop 7 still, right? ... /s

~~~
iolothebard
Actually I believe it was added to PS 4.0. Probably improved upon since then.
So you can dig up an ancient 90s high quality inkjet and PS 3.0 to copy money
if you really want to.

Or you could do what the really clever criminals do and just go into banking
and finance.

~~~
anonbanker
GIMP is much cheaper, and less of a hassle.

------
bwblabs
Another trick is to invert the colors and then import it to Photoshop & invert
it back.

------
nashashmi
I wonder if this is the reason why Paint .NET went closed source.

------
popper189
Interesting...

------
venomsnake
It is good that the same tools that can be used for creating and bypassing
game DRM, trainers and hack does not work here ...

