Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Xerox scanners randomly alter numbers in scanned documents (2013)

dkriesel.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 63 posts

Re: Xerox scanners randomly alter numbers in scanned documents (2013)

#21

Post by masswerk »

r4indeer wrote: post #17
masswerk wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

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.

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.

Re: Xerox scanners randomly alter numbers in scanned documents (2013)

#22

Post by KennyBlanken »

lynx23 wrote: post #8

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

What's even more amazing is that it wasn't retracted from the PDF standard.

Everyone knew how dangerous it was, changing digits, but it was left in the standard and in many implementations.

Years and years later, someone implements a turing machine using it, hacks journalist's iPhones, and the question is: why did modern systems implement it?

Re: Xerox scanners randomly alter numbers in scanned documents (2013)

#23

Post by sofixa »

masswerk wrote: post #21
r4indeer wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 a…

> 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.

Re: Xerox scanners randomly alter numbers in scanned documents (2013)

#24

Post by BiteCode_dev »

lynx23 wrote: post #8

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

PRISM didn't kill companies, Apple home button scandal didn't touch it, sony infecting its users with a rootkit didn't make it sell less playstations, HP lying cartridges had no impact on its long term business...

Fines and green washing are budgeted and only a small fractions of the profit they make by misbehaving.

On this very site you can read regularly people telling you we should forget about the MS of the past because now they are good guys. So they can get away with corruption, sabotage, monopoly abuse, insulting the competition, stealing, lying, patent trolling, etc. No problem. Bill Gates is a wonderful person and a great philanthropist nowadays.

The corporations and billionaires have found the recipe to get away with everything. The humans were always hackable.

Re: Xerox scanners randomly alter numbers in scanned documents (2013)

#25

Post by lynx23 »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #24
lynx23 wrote: post #8

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

PRISM didn't kill companies, Apple home button scandal didn't touch it, sony infecting its users with a rootkit didn't make it sell less playstations, HP lying cartridges had no impact on its long term business... Fines and green washing are budgeted and only a small fractions of the profit they make by misbehaving. On this very site you can read regularly people telling you we should forget about the MS of the past…

Well said, I couldn't agree more, unfortunately... I also noticed the "MS is cool now"-cult, felt surreal and almost like deliberate misinformation. Classic counterpart to FUD, Honeypotting. However, more people seem to fall for that because it is less known, and games the "assume good intentions"-virus.

Re: Xerox scanners randomly alter numbers in scanned documents (2013)

#26

Post by ensocode »

lynx23 wrote: post #8

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

too big to fail

Re: Xerox scanners randomly alter numbers in scanned documents (2013)

#27

Post by usrusr »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #24
lynx23 wrote: post #8

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

PRISM didn't kill companies, Apple home button scandal didn't touch it, sony infecting its users with a rootkit didn't make it sell less playstations, HP lying cartridges had no impact on its long term business... Fines and green washing are budgeted and only a small fractions of the profit they make by misbehaving. On this very site you can read regularly people telling you we should forget about the MS of the past…

Not so sure about HP. I mean yeah, their inkjet ploy still pays for itself I suppose, but at this point I consider home photo printing as basically dead, killed by greed, and those printer divisions as little more than autonomous external marketing divisions for those ubiquitous b/w Brother boxes.

Re: Xerox scanners randomly alter numbers in scanned documents (2013)

#28

Post by acqq »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #22
lynx23 wrote: post #8

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

What's even more amazing is that it wasn't retracted from the PDF standard. Everyone knew how dangerous it was, changing digits, but it was left in the standard and in many implementations. Years and years later, someone implements a turing machine using it, hacks journalist's iPhones, and the question is: why did modern systems implement it?

> implements a turing machine

Just searched for some details, it's amazing, all this inside of a JBIG2 image:

"Using over 70,000 segment commands defining logical bit operations, they define a small computer architecture with features such as registers and a full 64-bit adder and comparator which they use to search memory and perform arithmetic operations."

https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2021/12/a-deep-dive-i...

Re: Xerox scanners randomly alter numbers in scanned documents (2013)

#29

Post by josefx »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #22
lynx23 wrote: post #8

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

What's even more amazing is that it wasn't retracted from the PDF standard. Everyone knew how dangerous it was, changing digits, but it was left in the standard and in many implementations. Years and years later, someone implements a turing machine using it, hacks journalist's iPhones, and the question is: why did modern systems implement it?

> changing digits, but it was left in the standard and in many implementations.

The format has a lossless mode that would have saved Xerox a lot of trouble, of course it was just that mode that was used to hack the iPhones.

Also for many texts you don't need every digit to be correct, hell any single typo, smudge or bad font can fuck you over if that is the case, no need for a Xerox. Ideally your numbers either include a checksum or have some other redundancy, like requiring that they are written out as words.

Re: Xerox scanners randomly alter numbers in scanned documents (2013)

#30

Post by activiation »

joebiden2 wrote: post #3

Please add (2913) to the title: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Xerox%20scanners%20randomly%20... Edit: oops, 2013 - typed on my smartphone without reading back :)

I doubt any humans will be left in 2913. (Nice joke though)
Post reply on HN