91av

COLOUR printers are now so good that crooks can use them to counterfeit bank
notes and share certificates. To foil them, a manufacturer has developed a
forensic marking technology that will give each colour printer an invisible
fingerprint, making it as identifiable as the print hammers on a manual
typewriter.

Patents filed by Hewlett-Packard (GB 2361211) explain how the operation of a
printer’s yellow laser drum—or ink-jet print head—can be
microscopically marked with a unique code that can be spread over several
printed characters. As only one pixel in each character cell is altered, and the
eye is least sensitive to yellow, the mark is all but invisible. But detectives
could use a reading device tuned to receive yellow light to tie counterfeit
artefacts to a suspect printer.

While Hewlett-Packard won’t say whether it plans to use the new technology,
it has confirmed to 91av that it is now market-testing a
related technology—one that gives each printer its own unique Web address,
rather than a fingerprint.

Four types of laser printer now on sale in Britain are leaving the factory
with an “embedded Web server” inside it—effectively giving each printer a
URL. The toner cartridge contains a microchip which monitors the toner supply
and tells the embedded Web server how much is left. The main aim is to let IT
managers use a central browser to login to various printers and check how many
need a new toner cartridge. Or the printer may send an e-mail to request
one.

But privacy advocates will worry about having a printer online: will hackers
be watching what you print? An insider at Intel thinks Hewlett-Packard may be in
for a rough ride if it decides to press ahead with uniquely coded computer
peripherals. “We put identification codes into the Pentium III processor, and
then had to provide the option to disable it. There’s no chip ID in the Pentium
4,” the source said.