17 ms·

Xerox scanners/photocopiers randomly alter numbers in scanned documents (2013)

486 points by SergeAx 5y ago

skmurphy 5y ago
Related https://www.dkriesel.com/en/blog/2013/0909_xerox_money https://www.dkriesel.com/en/blog/2013/0909_xerox_money He acts with integrity and just wants the problem solved. He takes no money but he does accept non-monetary assistance from a number people interested in or affected by the bug.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
dredmorbius 5y ago
Previous discussion: 8 years ago / 112 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6156238 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6156238 6 years ago / 22 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9584172 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9584172
- lixtra 5y ago
  Also 2 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29206833 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29206833
  - eesmith 5y ago
    And another 2 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29207278 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29207278
    - nefitty 5y ago
      Maybe there should be a tool that shows or aggregates related discussions onto one page...
      - kergonath 5y ago
        I am not sure whether you are being sarcastic but there is, in a way. If HN detects that you are posting a duplicate, it just brings you to the previous story. It seems easily confused, though. Otherwise, if you have a doubt after posting a story, you can click on the website name next to the title to see other stories from the same website, which is another way of seeing duplicates. Of course, this is easier with websites that don’t get 20 stories a day.
        dredmorbius 5y ago
        It's fairly hit-or-miss. I happened to see the story in the new queue, thought it sounded familiar, and checked on its age.
        nefitty 5y ago
        I was being sincere. Sarcasm doesn't play well here, beyond even the standard problems of written communication. I thought maybe post deduplication "expires", and links are let through for discussion again x-weeks later. I also noticed dang posts these "previously discussed" links often, if not preempted by other users. I don't know whether to upvote or downvote those because it contributes to the convo but indirectly and with low-effort. Therefore I figure an automation might be worth the hassle.
        DonHopkins 5y ago
        There are many people who believe that dang is an automated robot AI! Previously discussed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25227906 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25227906 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18865276 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18865276 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29024525 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29024525 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26308945 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26308945 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19157839 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19157839 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28355861 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28355861 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24278472 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24278472 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21897355 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21897355 Personally, I think of him more like Palmer Eldritch, with three stigmata of a robotic right hand, artificial eyes, and steel teeth, who has returned from an expedition to the Prox system, in possession of a new alien hallucinogen Chew-Z to compete with Can-D. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three_Stigmata_of_Palmer_Eldritch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three_Stigmata_of_Palmer_E... Once you hear Jean-Michel Jarre's and Lauri Anderson's secret lyrics, you can’t unhear them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_x-v8KamefA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_x-v8KamefA Heed the Android Sisters’ dire warning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeerjrFjgT8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeerjrFjgT8
    - GekkePrutser 5y ago
      I wonder what caused so many people to link this 2013 article all of a sudden?
      - cheschire 5y ago
        There’s controversy currently regarding whether pinch-to-zoom alters images for a current ongoing court case. It’s borderline gaslighting at this point. I imagine it’s causing some people to do some extra deep digging while they try to reassure themselves that they do actually know a thing or two.
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    Thanks I'd missed that. Ony 6 comments, though numerous updoots. I usually consider < 10 comments minor. HN does permit reposts after a seemly interval.
  - djsbs 5y ago
    I posted another one 2 days ago, vis a vis the Rittenhouse trial. I was in a rush but I wanted to post something demonstrating how the fidelity of digital tech can be misleading. In my post I just picked the first main stream media outlet (CBC in my post). today’s post is much better.
1970-01-01 5y ago
"YOU HAD 1 JOB, XEROX. 8 JOB."
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
b8 5y ago
I don't purchase Xerox printers due to their not so great history. [1][2] 1. https://gigazine.net/gsc_news/en/20200720-cia-spies-xerox-machine/ https://gigazine.net/gsc_news/en/20200720-cia-spies-xerox-ma... 2. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/06/how-a-few-yellow-dots-burned-the-intercepts-nsa-leaker/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/06/how-a...
MiddleEndian 5y ago
So many software problems can be summarized with "All you had to do was nothing!"
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- josefx 5y ago
  Or implement the specification instead of just skimming it. As far as I remember they skipped several safeguards that would have prevented this problem when they implemented the compression algorithm.
  - DonHopkins 5y ago
    Yah, I've used some lame-assed JSON parsers whose authors thought they knew it well enough in their head that they didn't bother looking at the nice spec that laid it all out for them in black and while.
    - megous 5y ago
      Originally, many years ago, JSON didn't have a complete and unambiguous spec. It was just some webpage on some random website.
      - kragen 5y ago
        Maybe you mean http://web.archive.org/web/20030228034147/http://www.crockford.com/JSON/index.html http://web.archive.org/web/20030228034147/http://www.crockfo...? That has a context-free grammar (which omits the syntax for literals), railroad diagrams (which includes it), a prose description, an example JSON document, and a public-domain sample implementation in Java. It's true that there are some holes in the spec, notably the definition of whitespace and the semantics, but it's fairly complete and unambiguous.
        megous 5y ago
andrefuchs 5y ago
He gave a great talk about it at CCC about the issue. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7FeqF1-Z1g0 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7FeqF1-Z1g0
- Farbklex 5y ago
  One of my favourite talks. Very entertaining. I've watched it 3 times already. He also has a talk about mining data from German Railway (Deutsche Bahn) which is good.
- underdeserver 5y ago
  In German, unfortunately.
  - PinguTS 5y ago
    Sorry, but years ago we hadn't such great subtitles team as we have these days. Remind you, that the whole conference is run by volunteers.
    - underdeserver 5y ago
      I don't think there's anything wrong with running a conference in a language other than English. It just won't be accessible to me (and most others in the HN community), and that's OK. My comment was a regrettably rude way of asking if an English translation is available elsewhere, and fortunately it worked :)
  - MegaThorx 5y ago
    There is a english version of it there https://media.ccc.de/v/froscon2015-1524-lies_damned_lies_and_scans https://media.ccc.de/v/froscon2015-1524-lies_damned_lies_and...
    - ddtaylor 5y ago
      YT link for anyone who cares https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0O6UXrOZJo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0O6UXrOZJo
noisy_boy 5y ago
> This is not an OCR problem (as we switched off OCR on purpose), it is a lot worse – patches of the pixel data are randomly replaced in a very subtle and dangerous way: The scanned images look correct at first glance, even though numbers may actually be incorrect. I have a habit of scanning invoices/statements/manuals etc to pdf and found the above quite alarming. Though I don't use Xerox (my scanner is Epson Perfection V39), I never considered the possibility that a scan of a document can result in altered numbers. How do I know if my scanner could also be affected in case it uses similar underlying software/setup?
- abrichr 5y ago
  From the article: > In the next section, there is a a short manual for you to reproduce the error and see of you are affected.
- superjan 5y ago
  If you scan in color/grayscale, it can’t use JBIG2 compression. The machine will likely use JPEG for lossy compression, could result in less crisp scans, but it eliminates this risk.
  - askl 5y ago
    Or you could use JBIG2 with reasonable settings.
    - colinfinck 5y ago
      From the original post: "numbers seem to be mangled independently from the compression mode, which makes the issue hard to avoid"
      - ace2358 5y ago
        Reasonable settings meaning no compression setting which was mentioned to not have the issue
lifeisstillgood 5y ago
I used to scan documents that I wanted to keep, but frankly now I just take a photo on my phone. It's easier usually (pace dropboxes terrible interface), there are robbaly loads of apps to help, but imo, that's a whole class of hardware that's has been disrupted. Who else used to use scanners?
- jhoechtl 5y ago
  Scanners have the advantage not to distort the image what a photo inherently does. I do not know if today's phone cameras regard the spherical distortion, but I doubt as this would require to have several distance measures I guess those cameras don't have.
  - watt 5y ago
    It just doesn't matter - the only thing that matters is if the text (information) that's being imaged is readable for person receiving it. Apps like Office Lens will undistort the pic and it just looks good enough. (App knows you are taking a picture of A4 page, so it knows how to make it look straight + white.)
    - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
      Sometimes it does matter - a particularly small font, a colour document, watermarks, etc. Can render it unsuitable.
  - Sayrus 5y ago
    I used to use CamScanner. The scanning mode will take a distorted document, find the edges and output a "flattened" document. For me, this was usually more than enough to look like a scan.
    - ydant 5y ago
      > CamScanner And then it got bought and malware added. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20818177 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20818177 These days on Android, Google Drive's scan functionality works just as well as CamScanner used to. I use it for a lot of cases where I'd previously use a proper scanner - it's good enough most of the time. Or even Google Lens / Google Camera does a decent job of scanning in the special scan document mode, although you have to rely on the software actually recognizing that's what you're trying to do to get the button to show up to start the process.
hanniabu 5y ago
I foresee many legal cases being reopened due to this
- czechdeveloper 5y ago
  This article is about 8 years old, so I don't think it's going to happen.
svdr 5y ago
Also from Xerox: an encoding mechanism for a unique number represented by tiny dots spread over the entire print area. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_Identification_Code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_Identification_Code
- hyperman1 5y ago
  Can you counteract it with adding random yellow dots to a scan? And if you only print black/white, does it still print yellow dots?
  - namibj 5y ago
    For the latter: yes. Unless your printer doesn't have a yellow print head.
  - FractalParadigm 5y ago
    Given theres been controvery in the past regarding HP (and others, likely) printers refusing to print B/W when the colour ink is empty/missing[0], its highly likely that yes, they're still printing yellow dots on B/W stuff. [0]: https://support.hp.com/ca-en/document/c04331666 https://support.hp.com/ca-en/document/c04331666
    - michaelt 5y ago
      The refusal to print without colour ink could just be the vendors shaking down their customers for cash. Just like there are printer-scanners that won't scan if the ink is empty.
      - DonHopkins 5y ago
        The iSmell developers were hoping to make money the same way, by selling big smell combination pack cartridges that you have to entirely replace after any one of the smells ran out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISmell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISmell >The iSmell Personal Scent Synthesizer developed by DigiScents Inc. is a small device that can be connected to a computer through a Universal serial bus (USB) port and powered using any ordinary electrical outlet. The appearance of the device is similar to that of a shark’s fin, with many holes lining the “fin” to release the various scents. Using a cartridge similar to a printer’s, it can synthesize and even create new smells from certain combinations of other scents. These newly created odors can be used to closely replicate common natural and manmade odors. The cartridges used also need to be swapped every so often once the scents inside are used up. Once partnered with websites and interactive media, the scents can be activated either automatically once a website is opened or manually. However, the product is no longer on the market and never generated substantial sales. Digiscent had plans for the iSmell to have several versions but did not progress past the prototype stage. The company did not last long and filed for bankruptcy a short time after. This Wired Magazine article is a classic Marc Canter interview. I'm surprised they could smell the output of the iSmell USB device over the pungent bouquet from all the joints he was smoking: You've Got Smell! https://www.wired.com/1999/11/digiscent/ https://www.wired.com/1999/11/digiscent/ >DigiScent is here. If this technology takes off, it's gonna launch the next Web revolution. Joel Lloyd Bellenson places a little ceramic bowl in front of me and lifts its lid. "Before we begin," he says, "you need to clear your nasal palate." I peer into the bowl. "Coffee beans," explains Bellenson's partner, Dexster Smith. […] >"You know, I don't think the transition from wood smoke to bananas worked very well." -Marc Canter The failed quest to bring smells to the internet (thehustle.co) https://thehustle.co/digiscents-ismell-fail https://thehustle.co/digiscents-ismell-fail https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17476460 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17476460 DigiScent had a booth at the 1999 Game Developers Conference, with scantily dressed young women in skunk costumes. I told them about a game called "The Sims" I had been working on for a long time, and was hoping to finish and release some time soon. They unsuccessfully tried to convince me to make The Sims support the iSmell, and even gave me a copy of the SDK documentation, because they thought it would enrich the player's experience of all those sweaty unwashed sims, blue puddles of piss on the floor, stopped up toilets in the bathroom, and plates of rotting food with flies buzzing around on the dining room table.
aquanext 5y ago
I'm just absolutely dumbfounded that a bug like this could ever be allowed to ship.
OneTimePetes 5y ago
And destroyed the legal viability of several scanned document archives in the progress. If you have any contracts/legal binding documents that were archived with this technology, you may appeal them at any time.
- Arwill 5y ago
  In retrospect, this gives me validation of why i always disliked to scan documents to PDF instead of to just JPEG. But large document archives are traditionally done with TIFF, and should still be done like that.
  - OneTimePetes 5y ago
    So true, should store the unaltered raw-data-picture as scanned. Its actually nightmarish. A silent corruption of court-documents, stored plans and land-records, patent-filings with the originals often permanently gone. Contracts that can be nulled and voided by a hostile party on this basis by simply challenging the document on basis of the archiving process. A error so deep and systematic, it even mangled the birth certificate of the us-president when it was scanned. The whole affair is a huge advertisement for keeping written records and avoid digitization, same as voting machines.
  - mindslight 5y ago
    A raster image in a PDF uses the same exact JPEG compression, most likely. I didn't like any of the existing Linux scanning solutions, so I built my own paperless management tool. I was evaluating different compression algorithms for keeping authoritative masters and was eyeing JPEG2000 (I hate JPEG artifacts). But in the end I decided to go with FLIF, which is lossless. Despite its lower amount of battle testing, being lossless allows me to run a sha256 on the decompressed image and know that it is exactly what I had scanned in.
- mindslight 5y ago
  I believe I have actually been bitten by this bug, or something very similar. I had an IRA transfer go completely awry because the check was sent to the wrong PO Box. I typed out the transfer form with an address with the digit "5" (xournal is awesome). When I was tracking down the problem, the rep said that the digit on the transfer form was unquestionably a "6". Despite how farfetched it seems, it seems like their document management system perfectly changed that digit in this manner.
kzrdude 5y ago
So what was Xerox's response? Was it really nothing, in public?
- PinguTS 5y ago
  They issued a PR [1] after long talks with David acknowledging the problem. Then updated that article over time. The later released a bug fix. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20130811004759/http://realbusinessatxerox.blogs.xerox.com/2013/08/06/always-listening-to-our-customers-clarification-on-scanning-issue/ https://web.archive.org/web/20130811004759/http://realbusine...
CodesInChaos 5y ago
These issues will become much prevalent due do AI based image enhancement/upscaling, which can invent details which aren't there in the original.
jl6 5y ago
Interestingly, we have seen in the last week in the Rittenhouse trial an example of a judge taking a hyper-skeptic position on technology - namely, distrusting the zoom feature because it might add in extra information not present in the original image. It’s easy to ridicule this, and I do think that particular judge’s thought process was rooted in ignorance rather than plausible paranoia, but it’s not hard to see how cases like this Xerox bug sow the seeds of distrust in the non-tech populace. There really isn’t a lot of clear daylight between “the scanned copy might be different to the original” and “the zoomed version might be different to the original”.
- anonu 5y ago
  > was rooted in ignorance Not sure I follow. Someone questions a technical process because it might add extra information seems like a fairly cogent thought and awareness of tech. Even if it's not described or discussed in technical terms.
  - kzrdude 5y ago
    Yes I think it's good if the judge has a deep respect for "There might be things I don't know here" instead of jumping to judgment
  - jl6 5y ago
    I just meant that I think the judge simply has no idea of how computers draw images to screens, and that he wasn’t making a sophisticated argument about the risks of AI-based upscaling or unverified closed source software or some other kind of techno-trickery. And furthermore that this isn’t a slight on him, given how hard it is for the public to divine exactly how technology works, as illustrated by Xerox.
    - post_break 5y ago
      Ignorance and skepticism are completely different things.
- NoPicklez 5y ago
zoomablemind 5y ago
Quite disturbing to learn about such "artifacts" from a big-name mfgr. More so, that this was a known to them issue at the release time to be mentioned in user manual! By the way, reading the blog post I stumbled on quite a few minor typos (like "arrors" for "errors" etc.). Should be easy to fix, but in a way this adds more emphasis and mood to the content...
WalterBright 5y ago
I find compression algorithms to be frustratingly bad. For example, my scanner has an 8 color compression mode. Great! So I scan in a piece of paper printed in 3 colors - black, white, and, say, green. The green comes out as a dithering of multiple colors. Why can't the compression format figure out what are the dominant 8 colors in the scan, put out a table of the RGB values of those 8 colors, then compress to 8 colors? This would look and work great for an awful lot of scans. Another problem is b/w photos mixed with text. Setting the scanner to staic level black/white pixesl works great for text, but terrible for photos. Setting it to greyscale works great for photos, but terrible for text. Oh how I wish it would recognize greyscale areas and use greyscale for them, and black on white text areas and use static black/white pixels for them.

486 points by SergeAx 5y ago

Related https://www.dkriesel.com/en/blog/2013/0909_xerox_money https://www.dkriesel.com/en/blog/2013/0909_xerox_money He acts with integrity and just wants the problem solved. He takes no money but he does accept non-monetary assistance from a number people interested in or affected by the bug.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

dredmorbius 5y ago

Previous discussion: 8 years ago / 112 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6156238 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6156238 6 years ago / 22 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9584172 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9584172

lixtra 5y ago
Also 2 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29206833 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29206833
- eesmith 5y ago
  And another 2 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29207278 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29207278
  - nefitty 5y ago
    Maybe there should be a tool that shows or aggregates related discussions onto one page...
    - kergonath 5y ago
      I am not sure whether you are being sarcastic but there is, in a way. If HN detects that you are posting a duplicate, it just brings you to the previous story. It seems easily confused, though. Otherwise, if you have a doubt after posting a story, you can click on the website name next to the title to see other stories from the same website, which is another way of seeing duplicates. Of course, this is easier with websites that don’t get 20 stories a day.
      - dredmorbius 5y ago
        It's fairly hit-or-miss. I happened to see the story in the new queue, thought it sounded familiar, and checked on its age.
      - nefitty 5y ago
        I was being sincere. Sarcasm doesn't play well here, beyond even the standard problems of written communication. I thought maybe post deduplication "expires", and links are let through for discussion again x-weeks later. I also noticed dang posts these "previously discussed" links often, if not preempted by other users. I don't know whether to upvote or downvote those because it contributes to the convo but indirectly and with low-effort. Therefore I figure an automation might be worth the hassle.
        DonHopkins 5y ago
        There are many people who believe that dang is an automated robot AI! Previously discussed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25227906 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25227906 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18865276 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18865276 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29024525 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29024525 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26308945 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26308945 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19157839 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19157839 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28355861 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28355861 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24278472 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24278472 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21897355 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21897355 Personally, I think of him more like Palmer Eldritch, with three stigmata of a robotic right hand, artificial eyes, and steel teeth, who has returned from an expedition to the Prox system, in possession of a new alien hallucinogen Chew-Z to compete with Can-D. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three_Stigmata_of_Palmer_Eldritch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three_Stigmata_of_Palmer_E... Once you hear Jean-Michel Jarre's and Lauri Anderson's secret lyrics, you can’t unhear them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_x-v8KamefA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_x-v8KamefA Heed the Android Sisters’ dire warning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeerjrFjgT8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeerjrFjgT8
  - GekkePrutser 5y ago
    I wonder what caused so many people to link this 2013 article all of a sudden?
    - cheschire 5y ago
      There’s controversy currently regarding whether pinch-to-zoom alters images for a current ongoing court case. It’s borderline gaslighting at this point. I imagine it’s causing some people to do some extra deep digging while they try to reassure themselves that they do actually know a thing or two.
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  Thanks I'd missed that. Ony 6 comments, though numerous updoots. I usually consider < 10 comments minor. HN does permit reposts after a seemly interval.
- djsbs 5y ago
  I posted another one 2 days ago, vis a vis the Rittenhouse trial. I was in a rush but I wanted to post something demonstrating how the fidelity of digital tech can be misleading. In my post I just picked the first main stream media outlet (CBC in my post). today’s post is much better.

1970-01-01 5y ago

"YOU HAD 1 JOB, XEROX. 8 JOB."

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

b8 5y ago

I don't purchase Xerox printers due to their not so great history. [1][2] 1. https://gigazine.net/gsc_news/en/20200720-cia-spies-xerox-machine/ https://gigazine.net/gsc_news/en/20200720-cia-spies-xerox-ma... 2. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/06/how-a-few-yellow-dots-burned-the-intercepts-nsa-leaker/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/06/how-a...

MiddleEndian 5y ago

So many software problems can be summarized with "All you had to do was nothing!"

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
josefx 5y ago
Or implement the specification instead of just skimming it. As far as I remember they skipped several safeguards that would have prevented this problem when they implemented the compression algorithm.
- DonHopkins 5y ago
  Yah, I've used some lame-assed JSON parsers whose authors thought they knew it well enough in their head that they didn't bother looking at the nice spec that laid it all out for them in black and while.
  - megous 5y ago
    Originally, many years ago, JSON didn't have a complete and unambiguous spec. It was just some webpage on some random website.
    - kragen 5y ago
      Maybe you mean http://web.archive.org/web/20030228034147/http://www.crockford.com/JSON/index.html http://web.archive.org/web/20030228034147/http://www.crockfo...? That has a context-free grammar (which omits the syntax for literals), railroad diagrams (which includes it), a prose description, an example JSON document, and a public-domain sample implementation in Java. It's true that there are some holes in the spec, notably the definition of whitespace and the semantics, but it's fairly complete and unambiguous.
      - megous 5y ago

andrefuchs 5y ago

He gave a great talk about it at CCC about the issue. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7FeqF1-Z1g0 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7FeqF1-Z1g0

Farbklex 5y ago
One of my favourite talks. Very entertaining. I've watched it 3 times already. He also has a talk about mining data from German Railway (Deutsche Bahn) which is good.
underdeserver 5y ago
In German, unfortunately.
- PinguTS 5y ago
  Sorry, but years ago we hadn't such great subtitles team as we have these days. Remind you, that the whole conference is run by volunteers.
  - underdeserver 5y ago
    I don't think there's anything wrong with running a conference in a language other than English. It just won't be accessible to me (and most others in the HN community), and that's OK. My comment was a regrettably rude way of asking if an English translation is available elsewhere, and fortunately it worked :)
- MegaThorx 5y ago
  There is a english version of it there https://media.ccc.de/v/froscon2015-1524-lies_damned_lies_and_scans https://media.ccc.de/v/froscon2015-1524-lies_damned_lies_and...
  - ddtaylor 5y ago
    YT link for anyone who cares https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0O6UXrOZJo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0O6UXrOZJo

noisy_boy 5y ago

> This is not an OCR problem (as we switched off OCR on purpose), it is a lot worse – patches of the pixel data are randomly replaced in a very subtle and dangerous way: The scanned images look correct at first glance, even though numbers may actually be incorrect. I have a habit of scanning invoices/statements/manuals etc to pdf and found the above quite alarming. Though I don't use Xerox (my scanner is Epson Perfection V39), I never considered the possibility that a scan of a document can result in altered numbers. How do I know if my scanner could also be affected in case it uses similar underlying software/setup?

abrichr 5y ago
From the article: > In the next section, there is a a short manual for you to reproduce the error and see of you are affected.
superjan 5y ago
If you scan in color/grayscale, it can’t use JBIG2 compression. The machine will likely use JPEG for lossy compression, could result in less crisp scans, but it eliminates this risk.
- askl 5y ago
  Or you could use JBIG2 with reasonable settings.
  - colinfinck 5y ago
    From the original post: "numbers seem to be mangled independently from the compression mode, which makes the issue hard to avoid"
    - ace2358 5y ago
      Reasonable settings meaning no compression setting which was mentioned to not have the issue

lifeisstillgood 5y ago

I used to scan documents that I wanted to keep, but frankly now I just take a photo on my phone. It's easier usually (pace dropboxes terrible interface), there are robbaly loads of apps to help, but imo, that's a whole class of hardware that's has been disrupted. Who else used to use scanners?

jhoechtl 5y ago
Scanners have the advantage not to distort the image what a photo inherently does. I do not know if today's phone cameras regard the spherical distortion, but I doubt as this would require to have several distance measures I guess those cameras don't have.
- watt 5y ago
  It just doesn't matter - the only thing that matters is if the text (information) that's being imaged is readable for person receiving it. Apps like Office Lens will undistort the pic and it just looks good enough. (App knows you are taking a picture of A4 page, so it knows how to make it look straight + white.)
  - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
    Sometimes it does matter - a particularly small font, a colour document, watermarks, etc. Can render it unsuitable.
- Sayrus 5y ago
  I used to use CamScanner. The scanning mode will take a distorted document, find the edges and output a "flattened" document. For me, this was usually more than enough to look like a scan.
  - ydant 5y ago
    > CamScanner And then it got bought and malware added. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20818177 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20818177 These days on Android, Google Drive's scan functionality works just as well as CamScanner used to. I use it for a lot of cases where I'd previously use a proper scanner - it's good enough most of the time. Or even Google Lens / Google Camera does a decent job of scanning in the special scan document mode, although you have to rely on the software actually recognizing that's what you're trying to do to get the button to show up to start the process.

hanniabu 5y ago

I foresee many legal cases being reopened due to this

czechdeveloper 5y ago
This article is about 8 years old, so I don't think it's going to happen.

svdr 5y ago

Also from Xerox: an encoding mechanism for a unique number represented by tiny dots spread over the entire print area. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_Identification_Code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_Identification_Code

hyperman1 5y ago
Can you counteract it with adding random yellow dots to a scan? And if you only print black/white, does it still print yellow dots?
- namibj 5y ago
  For the latter: yes. Unless your printer doesn't have a yellow print head.
- FractalParadigm 5y ago
  Given theres been controvery in the past regarding HP (and others, likely) printers refusing to print B/W when the colour ink is empty/missing[0], its highly likely that yes, they're still printing yellow dots on B/W stuff. [0]: https://support.hp.com/ca-en/document/c04331666 https://support.hp.com/ca-en/document/c04331666
  - michaelt 5y ago
    The refusal to print without colour ink could just be the vendors shaking down their customers for cash. Just like there are printer-scanners that won't scan if the ink is empty.
    - DonHopkins 5y ago
      The iSmell developers were hoping to make money the same way, by selling big smell combination pack cartridges that you have to entirely replace after any one of the smells ran out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISmell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISmell >The iSmell Personal Scent Synthesizer developed by DigiScents Inc. is a small device that can be connected to a computer through a Universal serial bus (USB) port and powered using any ordinary electrical outlet. The appearance of the device is similar to that of a shark’s fin, with many holes lining the “fin” to release the various scents. Using a cartridge similar to a printer’s, it can synthesize and even create new smells from certain combinations of other scents. These newly created odors can be used to closely replicate common natural and manmade odors. The cartridges used also need to be swapped every so often once the scents inside are used up. Once partnered with websites and interactive media, the scents can be activated either automatically once a website is opened or manually. However, the product is no longer on the market and never generated substantial sales. Digiscent had plans for the iSmell to have several versions but did not progress past the prototype stage. The company did not last long and filed for bankruptcy a short time after. This Wired Magazine article is a classic Marc Canter interview. I'm surprised they could smell the output of the iSmell USB device over the pungent bouquet from all the joints he was smoking: You've Got Smell! https://www.wired.com/1999/11/digiscent/ https://www.wired.com/1999/11/digiscent/ >DigiScent is here. If this technology takes off, it's gonna launch the next Web revolution. Joel Lloyd Bellenson places a little ceramic bowl in front of me and lifts its lid. "Before we begin," he says, "you need to clear your nasal palate." I peer into the bowl. "Coffee beans," explains Bellenson's partner, Dexster Smith. […] >"You know, I don't think the transition from wood smoke to bananas worked very well." -Marc Canter The failed quest to bring smells to the internet (thehustle.co) https://thehustle.co/digiscents-ismell-fail https://thehustle.co/digiscents-ismell-fail https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17476460 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17476460 DigiScent had a booth at the 1999 Game Developers Conference, with scantily dressed young women in skunk costumes. I told them about a game called "The Sims" I had been working on for a long time, and was hoping to finish and release some time soon. They unsuccessfully tried to convince me to make The Sims support the iSmell, and even gave me a copy of the SDK documentation, because they thought it would enrich the player's experience of all those sweaty unwashed sims, blue puddles of piss on the floor, stopped up toilets in the bathroom, and plates of rotting food with flies buzzing around on the dining room table.

aquanext 5y ago

I'm just absolutely dumbfounded that a bug like this could ever be allowed to ship.

OneTimePetes 5y ago

And destroyed the legal viability of several scanned document archives in the progress. If you have any contracts/legal binding documents that were archived with this technology, you may appeal them at any time.

Arwill 5y ago
In retrospect, this gives me validation of why i always disliked to scan documents to PDF instead of to just JPEG. But large document archives are traditionally done with TIFF, and should still be done like that.
- OneTimePetes 5y ago
  So true, should store the unaltered raw-data-picture as scanned. Its actually nightmarish. A silent corruption of court-documents, stored plans and land-records, patent-filings with the originals often permanently gone. Contracts that can be nulled and voided by a hostile party on this basis by simply challenging the document on basis of the archiving process. A error so deep and systematic, it even mangled the birth certificate of the us-president when it was scanned. The whole affair is a huge advertisement for keeping written records and avoid digitization, same as voting machines.
- mindslight 5y ago
  A raster image in a PDF uses the same exact JPEG compression, most likely. I didn't like any of the existing Linux scanning solutions, so I built my own paperless management tool. I was evaluating different compression algorithms for keeping authoritative masters and was eyeing JPEG2000 (I hate JPEG artifacts). But in the end I decided to go with FLIF, which is lossless. Despite its lower amount of battle testing, being lossless allows me to run a sha256 on the decompressed image and know that it is exactly what I had scanned in.
mindslight 5y ago
I believe I have actually been bitten by this bug, or something very similar. I had an IRA transfer go completely awry because the check was sent to the wrong PO Box. I typed out the transfer form with an address with the digit "5" (xournal is awesome). When I was tracking down the problem, the rep said that the digit on the transfer form was unquestionably a "6". Despite how farfetched it seems, it seems like their document management system perfectly changed that digit in this manner.

kzrdude 5y ago

So what was Xerox's response? Was it really nothing, in public?

PinguTS 5y ago
They issued a PR [1] after long talks with David acknowledging the problem. Then updated that article over time. The later released a bug fix. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20130811004759/http://realbusinessatxerox.blogs.xerox.com/2013/08/06/always-listening-to-our-customers-clarification-on-scanning-issue/ https://web.archive.org/web/20130811004759/http://realbusine...

CodesInChaos 5y ago

These issues will become much prevalent due do AI based image enhancement/upscaling, which can invent details which aren't there in the original.

jl6 5y ago

Interestingly, we have seen in the last week in the Rittenhouse trial an example of a judge taking a hyper-skeptic position on technology - namely, distrusting the zoom feature because it might add in extra information not present in the original image. It’s easy to ridicule this, and I do think that particular judge’s thought process was rooted in ignorance rather than plausible paranoia, but it’s not hard to see how cases like this Xerox bug sow the seeds of distrust in the non-tech populace. There really isn’t a lot of clear daylight between “the scanned copy might be different to the original” and “the zoomed version might be different to the original”.

anonu 5y ago
> was rooted in ignorance Not sure I follow. Someone questions a technical process because it might add extra information seems like a fairly cogent thought and awareness of tech. Even if it's not described or discussed in technical terms.
- kzrdude 5y ago
  Yes I think it's good if the judge has a deep respect for "There might be things I don't know here" instead of jumping to judgment
- jl6 5y ago
  I just meant that I think the judge simply has no idea of how computers draw images to screens, and that he wasn’t making a sophisticated argument about the risks of AI-based upscaling or unverified closed source software or some other kind of techno-trickery. And furthermore that this isn’t a slight on him, given how hard it is for the public to divine exactly how technology works, as illustrated by Xerox.
  - post_break 5y ago
    Ignorance and skepticism are completely different things.
NoPicklez 5y ago

zoomablemind 5y ago

Quite disturbing to learn about such "artifacts" from a big-name mfgr. More so, that this was a known to them issue at the release time to be mentioned in user manual! By the way, reading the blog post I stumbled on quite a few minor typos (like "arrors" for "errors" etc.). Should be easy to fix, but in a way this adds more emphasis and mood to the content...

WalterBright 5y ago

I find compression algorithms to be frustratingly bad. For example, my scanner has an 8 color compression mode. Great! So I scan in a piece of paper printed in 3 colors - black, white, and, say, green. The green comes out as a dithering of multiple colors. Why can't the compression format figure out what are the dominant 8 colors in the scan, put out a table of the RGB values of those 8 colors, then compress to 8 colors? This would look and work great for an awful lot of scans. Another problem is b/w photos mixed with text. Setting the scanner to staic level black/white pixesl works great for text, but terrible for photos. Setting it to greyscale works great for photos, but terrible for text. Oh how I wish it would recognize greyscale areas and use greyscale for them, and black on white text areas and use static black/white pixels for them.