yellowdot - create an image file containing yellow dots
yellowdot --paper letter --filename overlay.png
Options:
--paper size of paper (letter or A4)
--filename name of output fileFor years, commercial printers have quietly inserted yellow dots into their output for the purpose of tracking which printer was used to create any document. The purpose of the "yellowdot" software is simply to bring attention to the issue, and to thwart amateur attempts to use these yellow dots to breach privacy.
This software will create a PNG containing yellow dots that can then be overlaid onto existing printer output. These dots are randomly distributed across the image, and are therefore not useful for securely obfuscating the identity that is encoded within the printer's generated dot pattern. However, "yellowdot" raises the amount of resources that must be expended to successfully identify the printer that generated a given document. It is hoped that "yellowdot" can be used to thwart amateur attempts to breach privacy, such as could conceivably be practiced in an office environment.
The commercial printer yellow dot initiative has been endorsed in some capacity by the United States Secret Service for the purpose of thwarting currency counterfeiting. As of October 2008, there is no law that requires printers to generate yellow dots for any purpose, including identification purposes. This software is not intended to be used for committing fraud, and it is the belief of the author that this software, in fact, cannot be used for such purposes. By analyzing a sufficient sample of printer output, the "noise" that is generated by this program can be eliminated, and the original printer source can be reconstructed.
- --paper
-
Two paper sizes are currently supported: letter and A4. Only 300 DPI is supported, so the paper size option results in the creation of a bitmap that will fill a complete side of the indicated paper type, when printed at 300 DPI. - --filename
-
The output will be stored in a file with this name. It should end in .png or .PNG, since that is the only format supported now. However, using another extension won't ruin anything. - --density
-
not implemented yet - --margin
-
not implemented yet
https://github.com/iandennismiller/yellowdot
git clone git@github.com:iandennismiller/yellowdot.git
sudo cpan -i GD
chmod 755 bin/yellowdot.pl
sudo mv bin/yellowdot.pl /usr/local/bin
http://w2.eff.org/Privacy/printers/docucolor/
http://frotz.zork.net/pipermail/printers/
http://frotz.zork.net/pipermail/printers/2007-April/000098.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printer_steganography
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/18/AR2005101801663.html
Ian Dennis Miller <iandennismiller@gmail.com>
Copyright (c) 2008 Ian Dennis Miller
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. Except as contained in this notice, the name(s) of the above copyright holders shall not be used in advertising or otherwise to promote the sale, use or other dealings in this Software without prior written authorization.
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