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Show HN: FalsiScan – Make it look like a PDF has been hand signed and scanned

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Re: Show HN: FalsiScan – Make it look like a PDF has been hand signed and scanned

#101

Post by somehnguy »

swixmix wrote: post #92
somehnguy wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm declaring myself as considered a Triceratops . Doesn't make it true.

It depends on the threat model. If I need to prove to a court in the US, then I'm signing paper and faxing it. To do it differently would be more expensive to prove.

Right, the legal system considers it secure.

I'm talking about the technical sense. Where there is no encryption at all, anyone with a phone line splitter can listen in, and the machines are usually not in a secured area so anyone could just pick up the fax and walk away. Not secure at all.

Re: Show HN: FalsiScan – Make it look like a PDF has been hand signed and scanned

#102

Post by dorkwood »

NelsonMinar wrote: post #73
mikehollinger wrote: post #9

Mac’s pdf viewer Preview has a signature capture feature built in that’s pretty slick. I use it all the time and haven’t encountered an objection. Tbh I’d wonder why you need to fuzz up and fake scan the image. If someone’s requiring that the doc be “signed in ink” or some such, more power to you!

Schwab (the bank in the US) started rejecting my signatures, on the basis that several documents I submitted had identical signature images. I worked around that by making a new signature, but you could imagine them escalating to also complaining about the fact it was not wet ink.

I had an application to open a new bank account rejected because my signature was not close enough to the one they had on file. I tried resolving things over the phone, but no luck. So I closed all my other accounts and switched to a different bank.

Re: Show HN: FalsiScan – Make it look like a PDF has been hand signed and scanned

#103

Post by linschn »

pingec wrote: post #83

This is great, thanks for sharing! Does it support multipage pdf documents and doing multiple signatures per document? Related to this, perhaps a UI for marking all the spots where signatures are required would make this tool extremely powerful!

Thanks, It does support multiple page, it will add a randomly chosen signature at the same place every page.

The ui is going to be a lot more complicated to code. Maybe I'll give it a try someday.

Re: Show HN: FalsiScan – Make it look like a PDF has been hand signed and scanned

#104

Post by linschn »

TehShrike wrote: post #40

The shell scripts depend on a "convert" cli command – that command doesn't exist on my machine, and I can't find any reference to it in the documentation, does anyone know where that command comes from?

I'll add installation instructions to the Readme tomorrow, thanks for pointing that out.

Re: Show HN: FalsiScan – Make it look like a PDF has been hand signed and scanned

#107

Post by derefr »

anonymfus wrote: post #96
derefr wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> despite a fax often being a scan that’s then transmitted via fax protocols ...what's the alternative to that "often"? What is a fax machine, if not a scanner attached to a modem?

Conventional fax machine transmits document while it scans it as it has (almost) no memory. Like analog TV camera, just much slower.

Sure, but that's still "a scanner attached to a modem." Nothing about a scanner implies that it must buffer the input, just like nothing about a printer implies that it buffers the output.

There are/were "line printers" doing "latch a character from the input line, print the character, unlatch" serial output (which were so common that Unix pipes are designed around the foibles of outputting to such devices.) Most POS thermal receipt printers are still line printers!

I don't know as much about scanners, but I can't imagine that the original (digital, attached to a computer) scanners weren't also "serial scanners"—i.e., rather than a 1D scan head with a long CCD strip that could latch an entire line at a time into a shift register, they would have had 2D scan-heads that would scan one pixel at a time, in a "read brightness, signal ready, wait for return line to unlatch" serial loop. No memory required, just terribly slow.

Re: Show HN: FalsiScan – Make it look like a PDF has been hand signed and scanned

#108

Post by monkpit »

somehnguy wrote: post #101
swixmix wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on the threat model. If I need to prove to a court in the US, then I'm signing paper and faxing it. To do it differently would be more expensive to prove.

Right, the legal system considers it secure. I'm talking about the technical sense. Where there is no encryption at all, anyone with a phone line splitter can listen in, and the machines are usually not in a secured area so anyone could just pick up the fax and walk away. Not secure at all.

I don’t think you need to argue that fax is not technically secure on HN. Pretty sure we are all on the same page there. What matters is legal precedent and existing policy in various countries.

Re: Show HN: FalsiScan – Make it look like a PDF has been hand signed and scanned

#109

Post by jve »

turbinerneiter wrote: post #6

I don't get the magical power of a signature at all. Everybody can write my name under a document. This project basically allows you to forge your own signature. Is it still legally binding? Do these rules even remember the original intent?

>Is it still legally binding?

Not in the EU country I live in.

1. We have digital signatures we can use to sign documents and they are legally binding for gov. organizations and optionally every organization that accepts em.

2. For internal documents, metadata is sufficient after organization issues an order.

3. Between orgs, metadata is sufficient if you address that within contract.

At least I remember it being that way few years ago.

This pdf viewable signature stuff is void. Only to make feel some people better.

Re: Show HN: FalsiScan – Make it look like a PDF has been hand signed and scanned

#110

Post by jimothyhalpert7 »

Has anyone had any experience trying to prove the authenticity of a signature? I remember reading somewhere that there are only three universities in the world, that have a department specializing in detecting signature forgery.
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