The following is from risk Digest 24.08 Date: Fri, 21 Oct 2005 9:53:05 PDT
From: "Peter G. Neumann" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Printer steganography (Mike Musgrove) Many color printers (Xerox, HP, etc.) add barely visible yellow dots that encode printer serial numbers and time stamps (down to the minute). Intended primarily to combat counterfeiters, the purportedly "secret" steganographic code in color printer copies has now been decoded by four people at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. (The encoding is straightforward, and includes no encryption.) There are of course various slippery-slope privacy issues. [Source: Mike Musgrove, Sleuths Crack Tracking Code Discovered in Color Printers, *The Washington Post*, 19 Oct 2005, D01; PGN-ed] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/18/AR2005101801663.html [Also noted by Amos Shapir, who suggests you look at the eff site, which nicely documents the encoding: http://www.eff.org/Privacy/printers/docucolor/ PGN] -- Jerry Hubbard [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ CWE-LUG mailing list [email protected] http://www.cwelug.org/ http://www.cwelug.org/archives/ http://www.cwelug.org/mailinglist/
