Imagine that every time you print a document, a secret code is automatically printed with it, which can be used to locate a person.

This all sounds like a conspiracy theory, but it’s not. In an attempt to catch counterfeiters, the US government convinced manufacturers to print each page in cipher.

It is very difficult to see it with the naked eye. The code also does not affect the print quality in any way, so many people do not know about the Germans. And worse, there is no way to ban it.

Many color laser printers add yellow dots when printing. This is the secret cipher

In the mid-1980s, Xerox developed a mechanism to encode unique numbers in the form of yellow dots that were printed with documents. These dimensions are approximately one-tenth of a millimeter (0.004 in), only visible under a magnifying glass or ultraviolet light. It all depends on which printer is being used.

The program developed the code “to allay fears that their color copiers could be used to counterfeit money or documents.” Peter Crean, a senior researcher at Xerox, told about this in 2004 in the PC World edition. Today this news is not on the PC World website.

Xerox created its own coding system and shared it with the US Secret Service. Other printer manufacturers have done the same.

It was not possible to block the printing of yellow dots. PC World warned that usually use a regular encoder, users will probably just break their printer.

For more than 20 years, the secret cipher has been calculated only by manufacturers and gastric organs. Most printer owners did not even know about it, and even more so could not decipher it.

The situation only changed in 2005, when the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) trick cracked the code of the Xerox DocuColor scheme. They were quickly able to understand what the yellow dots were conveying. The cipher contains information about the date and time of printing, as well as the serial number of the operation.

The EFF has stated that a similar code is seen in HP children. Later, the organization used a decoder program that could determine if a printer had a secret code. It turned out that all major manufacturers of manufacturers build it into their models: Brother, Canon, Dell, Epson, IBM, Konica, Kyocera, Lanier, Lexmark, NRG, OkiDATA, Panasonic, Ricoh, Samsung, Savin and Toshiba.

Following an EFF investigation, the US Secret Service discovered the presence of the markings.

This is strictly a countermeasure to prevent unwanted activity related to spoofing. [купюр]. This is our protection of the currency and the protection of people’s money earned by labor.

Eric Zahren, US Secret Service spokesman

In 2005, no one had heard of yellow detention points. Seth Shawn, an EFF technologist who led the study, said he had seen the encoding of documents, advertising printers, materials for at least 10 years.

Xerox spokesman Bill McKee confirmed the presence of the secret code, but did not provide details. HP said in a statement that it is participating in anti-counterfeiting efforts and encourages collaboration between printer manufacturers and those working to increase counterfeits.

Yellow dots are very rarely mentioned, although the EFF warned in 2005 that they were a violation of the rights to privacy and freedom of speech.

It should drive all of us thinking about how else the government is covertly working to violate privacy and freedom of speech. We must expect serious consequences.

EFF

An imperceptible cipher can be not only for detaining counterfeiters, but also for detecting any other cases, in case documents are found.

In modern technology, perfect printing technologies

EFF dropped out of the yellow dot printer list in 2017. The organization stated that all modern color laser printers print any codeswithout necessarily using yellow dots.

These may be other ciphers that the average person does not notice. Specialists have not yet met them either.

Printer manufacturers do not disclose which encryption technologies they use. What’s more, as of 2011, only Xerox had informed customers that there might be a secret ID on the promotional pages.

In 2018, the Technical University of Dresden analyzed the templates of 106 printer models from 18 manufacturers and found four different coding schemes. But they do not have any other details in the field of employment.

On at least one occasion, yellow dots helped detain a person.

On June 5, 2017, The Intercept published an issue related to the 2016 US election. It was based on classified National Security Agency (NSA) documents that The Intercept received from Reality Lee Winner. Job Worked for Pluribus International Corporation, an NSA contractor in Georgia.

On June 3, 2017, two days before the investigation, FBI agents arrested Winner at home.

officials at the bureau claimed they examined copies of the documents at The Intercept and noticed wrinkles, indicating that the pages had been printed and “hand-carried out of a secure location.”

Winner was highly regarded in collecting and passing on classified information. The girl admitted that she printed out the NSA report and sent it to The Intercept.

After that, it turned out that he began to carefully study the document, which is currently in the office. They are detection of yellow dots on pages in which the serial number of the circuit was encrypted, as well as the time and date of printing: 06:20 May 9, 2017.

Security researcher Rob Graham in his blog detailed how he managed to set the time.

He downloaded a PDF from The Intercept website, then opened it in a standard application. View on macOS, zoomed it in, took a screenshot, inverted the colors in a photo editor, and found the most yellow dots.

He then transferred them to a free online point decoding utility that EFF chose. After that, he learned all the encrypted data.

Data from the Winner computer indicated that on May 9, the girl searched the NSA base for the same report, and on March she deleted an email in The Intercept.

In 2018, the court sentenced her to five years and three months in prison.

It’s almost impossible to disable tracking

In 2018, researched by the Technical University of Dresden, also received a program that detects yellow dots and their illegible ones. The anonymization works by printing extra yellow dots on top of his secret code so it’s impossible to decrypt.

But this utility has two tricks. First, it does not work with all printers. There are a number of different printers in the vast world, so the probability should be set automatically, by setting and printing text.

The second disadvantage is that the program blocks only yellow dots. This technology is more than 40 years old, and although it is still used, especially in defenses, other encryption methods are implemented.

However, nothing has been known about the new secret codes since 2004, when the yellow dots became known all over the world.


Source: Iphones RU

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