8 ms·

Xerox scanners randomly alter numbers in scanned documents (2013)

187 points by gurjeet 3y ago

j16sdiz 3y ago
This is basically the same thing Samsung and friends doing to their camera app. Expect, in Samsung's case, some user love this.
- x3n0ph3n3 3y ago
  It's not quite the same, in that at least the false numbers come from elsewhere in the document being scanned. Samsung is pulling data from elsewhere on the internet to "correct" images.
- fsh 3y ago
  No, it really isn't. Xerox had a bug in the image compression algorithm. Smartphones use neural networks and multiple exposures to achieve picture quality far beyond what the hardware is capable of. This is very different technology for a very different purpose.
  - j16sdiz 3y ago
    It is the same "let's use image from something else to fill in this gap and hope nobody would notice" mindset. xerox use image snippets from same document, samsung use something the their "AI" made up. Both of them are trying to be smart and replace stuffs with something "similar"
- hooby 3y ago
  The issue was, that a small font sizes and default print quality settings, the caching mechanism would consider some digits like 0 and 8 to be similar enough, to use the cache - which would end up switching numbers around. This finding did completely invalidate the financial book keeping and backup of tax records of many companies. I sure hope nobody uses the Samsung camera app to file their taxes and keep their books...
  - seri4l 3y ago
    I'm sure many people do. There are tons of apps to scan and parse invoices. Makes sense as the current mid range phone cameras work just as well as mid range scanners but don't take any space and do that job an order of magnitude faster.
  - ceejayoz 3y ago
    > I sure hope nobody uses the Samsung camera app to file their taxes and keep their books... A lot of people take a photo of receipts for their records.
genpfault 3y ago
(2014) or (2015)
joebiden2 3y ago
Please add (2913) to the title: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Xerox%20scanners%20randomly%20alter%20numbers%20in%20scanned%20documents&type=story&dateRange=all&sort=byDate&storyText=false&prefix&page=0 https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Xerox%20scanners%20randomly%20... Edit: oops, 2013 - typed on my smartphone without reading back :)
- below43 3y ago
  Hello time traveler. I think you mean 2013 :-)
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - postsantum 3y ago
    You missed the joke
- activiation 3y ago
  I doubt any humans will be left in 2913. (Nice joke though)
- HPsquared 3y ago
  Or was it 2018?
- dvhh 3y ago
  that joke might be too meta
merricksb 3y ago
Other recent related submissions/discussions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34815391 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34815391 - "Xerox copier flaw changes numbers in scanned docs (2013)" (theregister.com), 36 points, 3 months ago, 8 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32537073 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32537073 - "JBIG2 Undetectable Data Corruption: Destroying Our Past, One Character at a Time" (circuitousroot.com), 67 points, 9 months ago, 34 comments
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
lynx23 3y ago
Even though this happened a long time ago, whenever I hear or think about it, I am a mazed that it didn't put Xerox out of business, or at least hurt a little more. After all, some big players were already doing digital archiving at the time. :-/ BTW, the CCC had a pretty neat presentation at that time as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0O6UXrOZJo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0O6UXrOZJo
- masswerk 3y ago
  Maybe, these – the demise of Xerox not happening and the size of the players involved – are related? As in: none wants their archives and data bases put in question? (Meaning, in order to claim damages, you'd have to admit that there is damage, indeed.)
  - r4indeer 3y ago
    But Xerox has admitted that the character substitution was enabled on all compression levels even though they claimed it was only active on one specific level. So theoretically, everyone who archived during that time using Xerox WorkCentres has to question their documents.
    - masswerk 3y ago
      Which might be exactly, why nobody wants to talk about this. (This may be especially nasty where archives had been digitized and then the analog originals were disposed of. What can you even do about this?) PS: In order to have learned anything from this, there should be a rule for the digitization of archives containing core documents to use (at least) two unrelated scanning technologies, with unrelated processors and unrelated software from different sources (much like Airbus does it with flight computers). A sole, single scan should attribute to nothing.
      - sofixa 3y ago
        > In order to have learned anything from this, there should be a rule for the digitization of archives containing core documents to use (at least) two unrelated scanning technologies, with unrelated processors and unrelated software from different sources But what do you do in case of conflict? There's no way of resolving it, so for this type of thing to be more effective, you'd need 3 different scans, and a quorum of 2 to decide the real version.
mo_42 3y ago
I remember this talk quite well. Also the other talks by David are interesting. Somehow there are not really consequences on this. So either archiving stuff, at least in the business context, is not really important. Or we simply trust these copies. The latter one is of course scary.
adhesive_wombat 3y ago
This can happen in some compression modes of DjVu as well at high compression factors, where the background and foreground is separated and the foreground (text, usually) is split into glyphs that can be shared by different instances. Mess up the recognition and the letters on the page appear literally different in the compressed "oulput".
pronoiac 3y ago
Using OCRmyPDF, I applied lossless JBIG2 compression to a scanned book, after some consideration. * the OCRmyPDF docs point to the JBIG2 Wikipedia page, and the Disadvantages section - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JBIG2#Disadvantages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JBIG2#Disadvantages - so it's easier to avoid this bug * I'd hoped OCR would fall out of the process, but nope * from the Wikipedia page, huh, the Pegasus malware exploited iOS's implementation of JBIG2
JackFr 3y ago
Xerox invented generative image ML for document scans, off a single training sample 10 years ago!
perpil 3y ago
One of the more amusing parts of this blog is that it contains at least two typos: "arrors" and "ancoding" and I can't tell if they were on purpose.
devy 3y ago
Is this a Xerox specific issue or industry wide problem? The author suspected that this is not an OCR issue What about out scanners? HP, Epson, Cannon, Ricoh, etc?

187 points by gurjeet 3y ago

This is basically the same thing Samsung and friends doing to their camera app. Expect, in Samsung's case, some user love this.

x3n0ph3n3 3y ago
It's not quite the same, in that at least the false numbers come from elsewhere in the document being scanned. Samsung is pulling data from elsewhere on the internet to "correct" images.
fsh 3y ago
No, it really isn't. Xerox had a bug in the image compression algorithm. Smartphones use neural networks and multiple exposures to achieve picture quality far beyond what the hardware is capable of. This is very different technology for a very different purpose.
- j16sdiz 3y ago
  It is the same "let's use image from something else to fill in this gap and hope nobody would notice" mindset. xerox use image snippets from same document, samsung use something the their "AI" made up. Both of them are trying to be smart and replace stuffs with something "similar"
hooby 3y ago
The issue was, that a small font sizes and default print quality settings, the caching mechanism would consider some digits like 0 and 8 to be similar enough, to use the cache - which would end up switching numbers around. This finding did completely invalidate the financial book keeping and backup of tax records of many companies. I sure hope nobody uses the Samsung camera app to file their taxes and keep their books...
- seri4l 3y ago
  I'm sure many people do. There are tons of apps to scan and parse invoices. Makes sense as the current mid range phone cameras work just as well as mid range scanners but don't take any space and do that job an order of magnitude faster.
- ceejayoz 3y ago
  > I sure hope nobody uses the Samsung camera app to file their taxes and keep their books... A lot of people take a photo of receipts for their records.

genpfault 3y ago

(2014) or (2015)

joebiden2 3y ago

Please add (2913) to the title: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Xerox%20scanners%20randomly%20alter%20numbers%20in%20scanned%20documents&type=story&dateRange=all&sort=byDate&storyText=false&prefix&page=0 https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Xerox%20scanners%20randomly%20... Edit: oops, 2013 - typed on my smartphone without reading back :)

below43 3y ago
Hello time traveler. I think you mean 2013 :-)
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- postsantum 3y ago
  You missed the joke
activiation 3y ago
I doubt any humans will be left in 2913. (Nice joke though)
HPsquared 3y ago
Or was it 2018?
dvhh 3y ago
that joke might be too meta

merricksb 3y ago

Other recent related submissions/discussions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34815391 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34815391 - "Xerox copier flaw changes numbers in scanned docs (2013)" (theregister.com), 36 points, 3 months ago, 8 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32537073 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32537073 - "JBIG2 Undetectable Data Corruption: Destroying Our Past, One Character at a Time" (circuitousroot.com), 67 points, 9 months ago, 34 comments

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

lynx23 3y ago

Even though this happened a long time ago, whenever I hear or think about it, I am a mazed that it didn't put Xerox out of business, or at least hurt a little more. After all, some big players were already doing digital archiving at the time. :-/ BTW, the CCC had a pretty neat presentation at that time as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0O6UXrOZJo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0O6UXrOZJo

masswerk 3y ago
Maybe, these – the demise of Xerox not happening and the size of the players involved – are related? As in: none wants their archives and data bases put in question? (Meaning, in order to claim damages, you'd have to admit that there is damage, indeed.)
- r4indeer 3y ago
  But Xerox has admitted that the character substitution was enabled on all compression levels even though they claimed it was only active on one specific level. So theoretically, everyone who archived during that time using Xerox WorkCentres has to question their documents.
  - masswerk 3y ago
    Which might be exactly, why nobody wants to talk about this. (This may be especially nasty where archives had been digitized and then the analog originals were disposed of. What can you even do about this?) PS: In order to have learned anything from this, there should be a rule for the digitization of archives containing core documents to use (at least) two unrelated scanning technologies, with unrelated processors and unrelated software from different sources (much like Airbus does it with flight computers). A sole, single scan should attribute to nothing.
    - sofixa 3y ago
      > In order to have learned anything from this, there should be a rule for the digitization of archives containing core documents to use (at least) two unrelated scanning technologies, with unrelated processors and unrelated software from different sources But what do you do in case of conflict? There's no way of resolving it, so for this type of thing to be more effective, you'd need 3 different scans, and a quorum of 2 to decide the real version.

mo_42 3y ago

I remember this talk quite well. Also the other talks by David are interesting. Somehow there are not really consequences on this. So either archiving stuff, at least in the business context, is not really important. Or we simply trust these copies. The latter one is of course scary.

adhesive_wombat 3y ago

This can happen in some compression modes of DjVu as well at high compression factors, where the background and foreground is separated and the foreground (text, usually) is split into glyphs that can be shared by different instances. Mess up the recognition and the letters on the page appear literally different in the compressed "oulput".

pronoiac 3y ago

Using OCRmyPDF, I applied lossless JBIG2 compression to a scanned book, after some consideration. * the OCRmyPDF docs point to the JBIG2 Wikipedia page, and the Disadvantages section - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JBIG2#Disadvantages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JBIG2#Disadvantages - so it's easier to avoid this bug * I'd hoped OCR would fall out of the process, but nope * from the Wikipedia page, huh, the Pegasus malware exploited iOS's implementation of JBIG2

JackFr 3y ago

Xerox invented generative image ML for document scans, off a single training sample 10 years ago!

perpil 3y ago

One of the more amusing parts of this blog is that it contains at least two typos: "arrors" and "ancoding" and I can't tell if they were on purpose.

devy 3y ago

Is this a Xerox specific issue or industry wide problem? The author suspected that this is not an OCR issue What about out scanners? HP, Epson, Cannon, Ricoh, etc?