The Difficulties of Forging Banknotes written 3 years ago
Whilst admiring the new ?20 note I had in my possession, I felt the need to scan it into the computer for further examination.
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- Action Not Supported
Onto my computer it went easily enough, but once it came to resizing and cropping it I came across a stumbling block - the application I was using refused to open the image! Paint Shop Pro flat out refused to touch the image, but Adobe did let me edit the image, but not to print it.
I was quite bemused by this, and suprised that things like this actually exist. I remember reading an article about preventing fraud, and that certain bank notes and official documents had started placing a special arrangement of dots on them, which could be digitally identified.
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- EURion constellation
The image to the left are the dots in question — the EURion constellation. The pattern of circles is able to be identified using a technique from the Counterfeit Deterrence System (CDS). The image below shows the highlighted sections where the circles are present on the ?20 note.
The CDS was quickly shown to be a bit of a .. none-issue really. There are easy ways of circumventing the technology (such as using a different piece of software, as currenlty only a few applications implement the CDS). Even the latest version of Photoshop Elements seems to acknowledge this fact by allowing the user to edit the file, but not print it, meaning that a wannabe crook only needs to find a suitable tool to print the resulting files.
Why then must we suffer the (inevitable) performance hit imposed by scanning an image for a collection of circles? The algorithm for finding the circles is obviously not too intensive, but on a large image surely the time involved scanning becomes noticeable?
The algorithm isn’t disclosed, but would most likely be based on a basic pattern matching technique, but still, why are my clock cycles being wasted on a useless deterrent?
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- The new twenty pound note
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saysAnother random fact for your ?20 note study, apparently it’s made from a new paper that will not ruin notes when immersed in water for a long period of time (many a time there has been where I’ve put a note on a 40 degree wash).