[OPLIN 4cast] OPLIN 4cast #347: Photocopier gotcha

[Editor]

Email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser. 
<http://www.oplin.org/4cast/>
OPLIN 4Cast

OPLIN 4cast #347: Photocopier gotcha
August 14th, 2013

xerox copierWe have a confession to make. We used to chuckle at people 
using the library photocopier who carefully compare their fresh copy to 
their original document. That's crazy behavior! Except now it turns out 
that it's not so crazy after all. Three weeks ago, a German researcher 
looked closely at one of his photocopies and discovered that it did 
/not/ match the original. Even more astounding, Xerox (the company that 
made his photocopier) admitted that it is possible for a photocopier to 
mistakenly change a document. Really?! If you can't trust your 
photocopier, what /can/ you trust?

  * Xerox scanners/photocopiers randomly alter numbers in scanned
    documents
    <http://www.dkriesel.com/en/blog/2013/0802_xerox-workcentres_are_switching_written_numbers_when_scanning?>
    (David Kriesel) "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."
  * Update on scanning issue: software patches to come
    <http://realbusinessatxerox.blogs.xerox.com/2013/08/07/update-on-scanning-issue-software-patches-to-come/?CMP=SMO-EXT#.Ugj4RuZDsz8>
    (Real Business at Xerox/Ken Ericson) "We continue to work tirelessly
    and diligently to develop a software patch to address the problem.
    We'll pass along information about the timing of the patch as soon
    as we have it. We want to reiterate, we believe the issue deals with
    'stress documents,' which include documents with small fonts, those
    scanned multiple times and hard to read."
  * When copiers aren't copying as they should...
    <http://page2pixel.org/2013/08/when-copiers-arent-copying-as-they-should/>
    (From Page2Pixel/Isaiah Beard) "Of course, the expectation is that
    the PDF will exactly match the original paper document. There's just
    one problem: an absolute, exact copy would mean generating large,
    uncompressed images, resulting in huge PDF files that would be
    difficult to pass around in e-mail attachments, and cost a lot of
    money to store on large hard drives for archival purposes. For many
    corporate settings, this would be a deal-breaker. So, to keep file
    sizes down, nearly all of these copy systems (not just Xerox)
    compress the scanned images, using the industry-standard JBIG2
    algorithm <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JBIG2>."
  * Security flaw with a difference - the Xerox scanner that makes your
    house smaller!
    <http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2013/08/09/security-flaw-with-a-difference-the-xerox-scanner-that-makes-your-house-smaller/>
    (Naked Security/Paul Ducklin) "It turns out that the Xerox scanner
    in question was using a compression scheme called JBIG2, which
    emerged from the grandly-named Joint Bi-level Image Experts Group.
    Bi-level images, as the name suggests, have just one bit per pixel,
    such as the images used in fax machines (if you remember them). And
    JBIG2 has a clever, yet, with hindsight very reckless, feature: if
    two 'swatches' of the image look like each other, the same data is
    used for both swatches, so that they effectively become identical."

*/Copiers fact:/*

So far, the copiers primarily affected by this problem seem to be older 
Xerox WorkCentre machines. See the list posted by Xerox 
<http://realbusinessatxerox.blogs.xerox.com/2013/08/07/update-on-scanning-issue-software-patches-to-come/?CMP=SMO-EXT#.Ugj4RuZDsz8>. 

------------------------------------------------------------------------
The */OPLIN 4cast/* is a weekly compilation of recent headlines, topics, 
and trends that could impact public libraries. You can subscribe to it 
in a variety of ways, such as:

  * *RSS feed.* You can receive the OPLIN 4cast via RSS feed by
    subscribing to the following URL:
    http://www.oplin.org/4cast/index.php/?feed=rss2.
  * *Live Bookmark.* If you're using the Firefox web browser, you can go
    to the 4cast website (http://www.oplin.org/4cast/) and click on the
    orange "radio wave" icon on the right side of the address bar. In
    Internet Explorer 7, click on the same icon to view or subscribe to
    the 4cast RSS feed.
  * *E-mail.* You can have the OPLIN 4cast delivered via e-mail (a'la
    OPLINlist and OPLINtech) by subscribing to the 4cast mailing list at
    http://mail.oplin.org/mailman/listinfo/OPLIN4cast.


OPLIN 4Cast
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.oplin.org/pipermail/oplin4cast/attachments/20130814/15fe0494/attachment-0003.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: kubrickheader.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 38379 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.oplin.org/pipermail/oplin4cast/attachments/20130814/15fe0494/attachment-0003.jpg>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: xerox-copier.png
Type: image/png
Size: 23737 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.oplin.org/pipermail/oplin4cast/attachments/20130814/15fe0494/attachment-0003.png>