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What Happens When You Try to Photoshop Money
- mg1982 12y agoI had no idea the spockyourfive thing was a thing, but I'm kind of glad it is. Worth a look if any of this amused you: http://www.thepoke.co.uk/2014/08/05/10-banknotes-improved-by-doodles/ http://www.thepoke.co.uk/2014/08/05/10-banknotes-improved-by...
- jerje 12y agoThis is a good read. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation always wondered about performance if these apps are scanning every image for this pattenrn
- TazeTSchnitzel 12y agoIt's known to not be the EURion constellation that image software uses, it's some secret proprietary mechanism. See http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~sjm217/projects/currency/ http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~sjm217/projects/currency/ which is cited by the page.
- 13 12y agoInterestingly even Adobe doesn't know what it is, the detection software was supplied to them as a binary. I messed around with it in a similar way to the author out of sheer curiosity and ended up completely baffled by the whole thing, even trying to eliminate parts that aren't triggers is impossible by my measure. I should make it clear I have no desire whatsoever to thwart the system (as others point out, simply using different software does that), but the methods it is using seem to completely defy all of the fingerprinting systems I'm aware of and is therefor incredibly interesting as a result.
- toothbrush 12y agoThis sounds like a job for an approach like [0]! Reminds me of [1]. 0. http://lcamtuf.blogspot.fr/2014/11/pulling-jpegs-out-of-thin-air.html http://lcamtuf.blogspot.fr/2014/11/pulling-jpegs-out-of-thin..., http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/afl/ http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/afl/, american fuzzy lop 1. http://news.cornell.edu/stories/2015/03/images-fool-computer-vision-raise-security-concerns http://news.cornell.edu/stories/2015/03/images-fool-computer..., Images that fool computer vision
- 13 12y agoDoesn't AFL rely on being able to compile the application with it's hooks? It's been a long time since I've messed with Photoshop, but it's a complete mess of random dead code inside (even includes poems about a dead dog believe it or not), chances are you're looking for a completely obfuscated bunch of assembly in the hundred plus megabyte binary. I love Hopper, but not that much.
- toothbrush 12y agoYes, you're right. I'm admittedly not at all an expert on this type of thing, but surely some randomised testing, starting from a real banknote and making small mutations, would be doable.
- 13 12y agoOh sure, you could make a quick imagemagick script to make random variations and get a pass/fail with AppleScript, or even do some exploring with a debugger while opening one. Main barrier is motivation, I have no desire to counterfeit money (and who would use PhotoShop for that anyway), so I decided to let that rest.
- toothbrush 12y agoIt wouldn't be about counterfeiting, but about learning more about the detection algo :)
- TazeTSchnitzel 12y agoIt's obviously a binary because no matter what program, the error message looks identical. It's weird.
- Karunamon 12y agoWhich means this entire thing can be defeated by Software Cracking 101 - look for the error message that gets triggered when you do the thing you're trying to change, work backwards, and change the JE/JNE assembly instruction or NOP it out. Somehow I think it's not that simple, but also somehow I think that real counterfeiters will not be deterred by this manner of weak DRM.
- derekp7 12y agoIt's not meant to deter "real" (professional) counterfeiters -- this, along with the copy machine code, is meant to stop casual counterfeiting. Which is a good thing, as there are quite a number of people who are normally honest, yet could be overcome with a strong enough temptation (getting a free $20 bill), if it appears easy enough. And of course they will get caught and have their lives ruined. So by making the act of falling into the temptation a bit harder, you are keeping more honest people honest.
- davb 12y agoI've run into this a couple of times over the last 10 oer so years when scanning documents. Rarely, a document will trigger a false-positive on a network scanner (or printer-scanner-copier) and I have had to manipulate the document by trial/error to trick the device into scanning it properly. A few months ago, one of our Konica all-in-one units flat out refused to scan a customer invoice, claiming that it's illegal to scan banknotes.
- Someone 12y agoIs it illegal to scan banknotes in the USA? In the Netherlands there is nothing illegal about copying money; what is illegal is spending it (or having it spent by someone else) as real money on purpose. Idea behind that, I think, is that there is a gradual scale from real money to good counterfeit to lousy counterfeit to images of money printed in a journal or even on a coffee mug to basically whatever can be printed.
- davb 12y agoI'm not sure - I'm from Scotland. Though from what I understand, it's illegal to make copies (electronic or otherwise) of banknotes in both Scotland and the USA. When I was recently in the US, I bought a novelty pad of oversized $100 bills from the Bureau of Engraving and Printing gift shop. It's obvious they're not real but they have all the hallmarks of a real bill - a serial number, same print, series number and even the phrase "THIS NOTE IS LEGAL TENDER FOR ALL DEBTS, PUBLIC AND PRIVATE". Even a fake (monochrome, scanned and non-reactive) security strip. My fiancée bought a similar pad of oversized novelty £20 notes here a few years ago which were littered with the word "specimen" and small print stating that they were for novelty use only. Additionally, many government websites with images of banknotes here have the word "specimen" printed quite prominently on their images (except where the image is a photograph of a banknote in some setting, not stand-alone).
- voxic11 12y agoIn the US you are allowed to create fake banknotes but there are some restrictions on how closely they can resemble real ones. According to the Counterfeit Detection Act of 1992, a reproduced bill must be: a.) either less than 75% or more than 150% the size of a real bill, b.) one-sided, and c.) made with only one color
- jrockway 12y agoI like how the workaround is to open the file with The Gimp and export to psd. Then Photoshop will open it fine. I'm assuming this is a case of "the suits told us it couldn't import banknotes", so they made it not import banknotes. Banknotes that were already imported... well you didn't say anything about that. (The same thing happened for the DVD encryption. Someone asked an engineer for encryption. The engineer just happened to have made it easy to bruteforce the key, negating the entire point of the encryption.) Remember: you're the software engineer -- write the software you want, not the software you think someone wants you to write.
- rjaco31 12y ago> write the software you want, not the software you think someone wants you to write It's not always that easy =(
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- 13 12y ago"Encryption" of media like that is always just going to be obfuscation, you get protection form the anti DMCA removal law, the actual encryption isn't worth the bits it flips. In fact, if you make it "stronger" from a cryptographic standpoint you simply make it cost more to decode and add no strength to the actual defense it is trying to provide (getting further under DMCA umbrella). If you want to criticize it was probably foolish to include actual encryption in the first place, why waste cycles when you can XOR with 0x69?
- elwell 12y agoHere's a hi res image of a ten dollar bill. It's pretty cool: http://i.imgur.com/XInY8HI.jpg http://i.imgur.com/XInY8HI.jpg
- butwhy 12y agoYou wouldn't download a ten dollar bill.
- jimlei 12y agoI would download a car, a handbag, a television and a ten dollar bill if I could. edit: just kidding - I'd probably download a parking lot worth of cars
- octatoan 12y agoAnd RAM.
- ntw1103 12y agoI download ram all the time: http://downloadmoreram.com/ http://downloadmoreram.com/
- anon4 12y agoI'd download all the rest, but not money. The reason being that the money will exchange for things of greater value than the work you spent on manufacturing the banknotes; while, when it's possible to download and manufacture a car at home, the car will have the same value as the work you spent on making it. In short, making your own money screws the economy; making your own cars doesn't.
- tjr 12y agoIf we could download cars, handbags, and televisions like we can pictures of ten dollar bills, we might not need any more ten dollar bills...
- spacemanmatt 12y ago
- qnaal 12y agoI guess this is orthogonal to those little yellow circles?
- spacemanmatt 12y agoThey yellow dots watermark output with printer identification information. I think this serves CDS, but has potential to be used/misused for so much more.
- qnaal 12y agoSorry, I forgot that the printer dots were lingering in the HN consciousness- I was thinking of these things [0] (shown here [1] on the us $10, with little ones next to them to give apparent visual purpose) which I've also seen on non-currency things such as event/movie tickets iirc. Wikipedia suggests a scanning-hardware focus of the circles, as opposed to the software focus of the "Counterfeit Deterrence System" discussed in OP. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation [1] http://i.imgur.com/XInY8HI.jpg http://i.imgur.com/XInY8HI.jpg left side
- jimlei 12y agoThey mention this was "discovered three years ago", but I was sure I remembered this from years back. "Adobe adds algorithms to Photoshop that prevent users from opening or printing scanned money. While we've been aware of this feature for quite a while" Posted by Craig Swanson on May 14, 2006 07:03 PM http://www.creativetechs.com/iq/how_to_use_scanned_money_in_adobe_photoshop.html http://www.creativetechs.com/iq/how_to_use_scanned_money_in_... edit: seems to be more info here, from 2004. Latest Photoshop version contains anti-counterfeit measures http://www.geek.com/news/latest-photoshop-version-contains-anti-counterfeit-measures-555286/ http://www.geek.com/news/latest-photoshop-version-contains-a...
- f055 12y agoI encountered this error in 2005 on a Photoshop version that was 2 or 3 years old. Also, back then you could mirror the scanned bill in some other app and it would open fine in PS. It is funny how this is still front page news in 2015 :P
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- __chrismc 12y agoMe and a friend tried it with a (UK) bank note while we were at school, way back in the 90's, and received a warning about not being allowed to print scanned currency on screen when the scan finished. It might not have been Photoshop we used (Paint Shop Pro springs to mind), but similar detection techniques have been around for a long time!
- fanf2 12y agoSee also this research from the security group at the University of Cambridge Computer Lab: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~sjm217/projects/currency/ http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~sjm217/projects/currency/
- digimarkup 12y agoI was just asking about this yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9309120 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9309120 I would love to know how to manipulate images/documents to make it so that photoshop won't open them and photocopiers won't copy them...
- lexicality 12y agoJust pop the EURion constellation in them somewhere (ideally a number of variations of it). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation
- bwblabs 12y agoWould be funny to include http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation on websites, so you cannot make screenshots with Photoshop ;)
- MichaelApproved 12y agoFrom the first paragraph of your link: "Research shows that the EURion constellation is used for color photocopiers and is likely not used for computer software."
- bwblabs 12y agoAnother trick is to invert the colors and then import it to Photoshop & invert it back.
- akavel 12y agoThe awesome article exploring and testing the protection mechanisms, with pictures, from ~2009 (actually earlier probably, that's the "last modified" date of the article): http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~sjm217/projects/currency/ http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~sjm217/projects/currency/ (author notes his own earlier presentations on this topic starting 2004)
- venomsnake 12y agoIt is good that the same tools that can be used for creating and bypassing game DRM, trainers and hack does not work here ...
- weinzierl 12y agoAs far as I know many countries use Digimarc for their money. EDIT: Here is a source: Recent versions of image editors such as Adobe Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro refuse to print banknotes. According to Wired.com, the banknote detection code in these applications, called the Counterfeit Deterrence System (CDS), was designed by the Central Bank Counterfeit Deterrence Group and supplied to companies such as Adobe as a binary module. However, experiments by Steven J. Murdoch and others showed that this banknote detection code does not rely on the EURion pattern. It instead detects a digital watermark embedded in the images, developed by Digimarc. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation An interesting hack is that this Digimarc pattern could be used for a Copy Attack [1]. To my knowledge the mark is not tied to the image of the bank note in any way. So in short: You could extract the Digimarc pattern and apply it to any other document, which then in turn could not be edited by mentioned software. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copy_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copy_attack
- kweks 12y agoCorrect! http://wildsparx.com/eurionize/ http://wildsparx.com/eurionize/
- tokenizerrr 12y agoSadly that download link appears to be dead. edit: found it here https://github.com/jplona/code/blob/master/eurionize.pl https://github.com/jplona/code/blob/master/eurionize.pl
- schoen 12y agoNote that the Digimarc currency watermark is distinct from the EURion constellation. The latter has been well-documented publicly, the former not yet, as far as I know.
- userbinator 12y agoThe fact that the watermark detection algorithm doesn't seem to require a tremendous amount of processing power unlike most image processing/detection algorithms - apparently it's present in scanners and photocopiers too - implies that it could also be embedded in camera firmware, making it very possible to produce cameras that refuse to take pictures of certain things... I find that more unsettling since scanners/photocopiers are somewhat more specialist equipment today, whereas practically everyone has at least one camera. Imagine not being able to take a picture of something crucial like a crime in progress because there happened to be something watermarked present in the scene. That's why I don't believe in leaving these types of moral decisions to the machine. I think it's only the legal issues that keep people from RE'ing the algorithm and generating obviously-non-banknote images which get detected, in a similar spirit to this: http://news.cornell.edu/stories/2015/03/images-fool-computer-vision-raise-security-concerns http://news.cornell.edu/stories/2015/03/images-fool-computer... As the watermark detection algorithm is not that resource-intensive, I would guess that a false positive is even easier to produce.
- elliottlan 12y agoThis jogged my memory - I remember these coming out in 2004: Adobe_Photoshop_CS_Banknote_Patch-TiGER Adobe_Photoshop_CS_v.8.01_Banknote_Patch-PARADOX
- byuu 12y agoAdded to Photoshop 8 (CS). It's a good thing it's completely impossible to run Photoshop 7 still, right? ... /s
- iolothebard 12y agoActually I believe it was added to PS 4.0. Probably improved upon since then. So you can dig up an ancient 90s high quality inkjet and PS 3.0 to copy money if you really want to. Or you could do what the really clever criminals do and just go into banking and finance.
- anonbanker 12y agoGIMP is much cheaper, and less of a hassle.
- chiph 12y agoPhotocopiers will keep a count of the number of attempts to copy currency, and the copier leasing company tracks those numbers. I wonder if Photoshop does the same.
- nashashmi 12y agoI wonder if this is the reason why Paint .NET went closed source.
- Grue3 12y agoThis is why GIMP is superior. It doesn't impose what you can and cannot edit, and never will.
- davexunit 12y agoYes, this is a good example of why Free Software is very important.
- AndrewKemendo 12y agoOh wow. There is nothing preventing Adobe from implementing a script that auto forwards your account details (Via Adobe Cloud!) to law enforcement if the CDS detects money. That alone could easily be made into probable cause and based on how easily warrants are being given nowadays, could easily lead to a no knock warrant being issued.
- lostlogin 12y agoI imagine the legal bill developing that scheme wouldn't be small as there are quite a few countries laws to be considered. Here in NZ the way to get a massively overreaching search warrant is just to say that the FBI are interested, see Kim Ditcom.
- joeblau 12y agoI've tired to open the bills in the post and a few bills in this thread and they all open with no problems in Affinity Designer [1]. [1] - https://affinity.serif.com/ https://affinity.serif.com/
- krick 12y agoNothing new, and honestly I'm not so worried about Photoshop, as it's some closed-source program, which does whatever it wants and has a bunch of good alternatives anyway (well, for drawing purposes, at least, because I still can't convince myself Gimp is usable). What is much more disturbing: I still don't know if it's possible to find hardware devices like scanner and printer, that do what they are intended to do, and are not masking banknotes or leaving special marks on printed image.
- TaylorGood 12y agoFor a marketing campaign, "bonus cash" was the offer. An image that wouldn't open in Photoshop was able to open in Illustrator, which, dragging that image from Illustrator to Photoshop worked perfectly.
- hammock 12y agoRelated http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printer_steganography http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printer_steganography "Printer steganography is produced by laser printers, including Brother, Canon, Dell, Epson, HP, IBM, Konica Minolta, Kyocera, Lanier, Lexmark, Ricoh, Toshiba and Xerox, where tiny yellow dots are added to each page. The dots are barely visible and contain encoded printer serial numbers and timestamps."
- popper189 12y agoInteresting...