Cheap Scanners Can "Fingerprint" Paper 88
carusoj writes "Researchers at Princeton University and University College London say they can identify unique information, essentially like a fingerprint, from any blank sheet of paper using any reasonably good scanner. The technique could be used to crack down on counterfeiting or even keep track of confidential documents. The researchers' paper on the finding is set to be presented at an IEEE security conference in Oakland, Calif., in May."
Update: 03/10 22:43 GMT by T : J. Alex Halderman, Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Michigan and one of the authors of the study, writes with more: "My group has just put up a site about the work and a copy of the full paper, and we will probably add a video later tonight."
Not *actual* fingerprints (Score:5, Informative)
Features that act like fingerprints.
Things like fiber arrangement, etc
Re:Dirty Fingers (Score:4, Informative)
You must not have been arrested recently. I was picked up on an ancient traffic ticket about 4 years ago, and they used an optical scanner to take fingerprints, so there was no ink. Of course, the scanner tended to mess up a lot if your fingers were sweaty due to, say, just having been arrested, so getting fingerprinted was an ordeal in itself.
That being said, though, this article seems to be more about getting identifiable fingerprints OF a piece of paper, not getting a person's fingerprints FROM a piece of paper. I'm not sure I see the use case in this, since companies don't maintain fingerprint records of the paper they sell, and doing so would be impractical given how much paper is produced on a daily basis.
Re:Dirty Fingers (Score:0, Informative)
Last year as a matter of fact. Where I was at, they used ink. Bad thing was, it was in St. Louis.
HP did this 10 years ago... (Score:3, Informative)
HP released a palm-held page scanner that you would wipe across the paper like a squeegee. It would scan the text and assemble the entire page based upon the unique grain pattern in the paper. The market didn't understand the concept, wasn't ready for a briefcase document scanner, whatever the case was, but it failed and was withdrawn from market.
Re:yeah, and? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:yeah, and? (Score:3, Informative)
Colour photocopiers detect the EURion marking though.