Re: Security clampdown on the home PC banknote forgers
In article [EMAIL PROTECTED] hq1.NA.RSA.NET, Trei, Peter [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes From the original article: The software relies on features built into leading currencies. Latest banknotes contain a pattern of five tiny circles. On the £20 note, they're disguised as a musical notation, on the euro they appear in a constellation of stars; on the new $20 note, the pattern is hidden in the zeros of a background pattern. Imaging software or devices detect the pattern and refuse to deal with the image. It would be interesting to figure out exactly what the 'don't copy' information is. If it's really just five little circles, think of the fun you could have - The circles act as a do not copy for recent models of colour photocopier. They are NOT the mechanism involved in the latest round of software detection by Adobe et al .. hence the fun is limited :( The circles have been on UK and EU notes for some time, you can also see them all over the latest US $20 bill. It is suggested that there is more information to be extracted from the way that the basic five circle units are combined together (said to identify the issuing bank), but no firm results are known. Just the five circles on an otherwise blank sheet are definitely sufficient to cause the particular copier experimented with to indicate the presence of currency. ie: it's all true :) Markus Kuhn originally worked out the nature of the pattern in February 2002. It is now believed to have been invented by Omron, but this is hearsay :( not something citable. http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/eurion.pdf -- richard Richard Clayton They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. Benjamin Franklin signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: Security clampdown on the home PC banknote forgers
On Tue, Jun 08, 2004 at 05:15:25PM -0400, Trei, Peter wrote: From the original article: The software relies on features built into leading currencies. Latest banknotes contain a pattern of five tiny circles. On the £20 note, they're disguised as a musical notation, on the euro they appear in a [...] Not just those, but see a friend's paper on this, presented to the Information Hiding Workshop 2004: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/sjm217/projects/currency/ MBM -- Matthew Byng-Maddick [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://colondot.net/ (Please use this address to reply) - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Security clampdown on the home PC banknote forgers
On 6 Jun 2004, at 15:30, R. A. Hettinga wrote: http://observer.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4940746-102285,00.html Observer Security clampdown on the home PC banknote forgers Banks win EU support for software blocks to tackle the cottage counterfeiters Tony Thompson, crime correspondent Sunday June 6, 2004 The Observer Computer and software manufacturers are to be forced to introduce new security measures to make it impossible for their products to be used to copy banknotes. Hmm hmmm ... and what about Open Source graphics software like Gimp? http://www.gimp.org/ Will Gimp be banned because of everybody can throw out the call to the banknote detection routine? Will the banknote detection software be made publicly available to the Gimp developer team? Questions over questions ... Axel H Horns - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Security clampdown on the home PC banknote forgers
On Tue, 8 Jun 2004, Axel H Horns wrote: Hmm hmmm ... and what about Open Source graphics software like Gimp? http://www.gimp.org/ Will Gimp be banned because of everybody can throw out the call to the banknote detection routine? Will the banknote detection software be made publicly available to the Gimp developer team? Questions over questions ... Probably not; instead, the banknote detection stuff will probably be pushed out to tamper-resistant hardware ROMs in the printers, where it's *NOT* under the control of anything running on a general-purpose computer. Because, really, nothing prevents someone from building their own electronic device from scratch and attaching it to the printer. The logic has to be something you can't use the printer without, and that means built into it. This is actually a lot less annoying than something like Palladium, where people want remote restriction on a general-purpose PC. If it's pushed out to the printing hardware, there's no need to restrict the architecture of a general-purpose machine. Of course, there is such a thing as money that really and truly *can't* be counterfeited. Elements such as gold, or other rare commodities, for example, cannot be faked; something either is gold, or it isn't. Also, useful objects and consumables in general cannot be faked; something either is useful, or it isn't. Fiat currencies are based on artificially imposed rarity, and increasingly people are able to overcome the artificial impositions. Wouldn't it be a stitch if nations were forced to re-adopt the gold standard (or adopt the chocolate standard) because all their bills (and SmartCoins, and RFID tokens, and ) could be counterfeited? Bear - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Security clampdown on the home PC banknote forgers
Quoting Axel H Horns [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Will the banknote detection software be made publicly available to the Gimp developer team? This makes the assumption that the gimp developers will include it into future versions. How will that make much of a difference? A savvy coder will just go in and rip the offending code out. - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
