bbc.

com

BBC - Future - Why printers add secret

tracking dots
Chris Baraniuk
8-10 minutes

On 3 June, FBI agents arrived at the house of government

contractor Reality Leigh Winner in Augusta, Georgia. They had
spent the last two days investigating a top secret classified
document that had allegedly been leaked to the press. In order to
track down Winner, agents claim they had carefully studied copies
of the document provided by online news site The Intercept and
noticed creases suggesting that the pages had been printed and
hand-carried out of a secured space.

In an affidavit, the FBI alleges that Winner admitted printing the

National Security Agency (NSA) report and sending it to The
Intercept. Shortly after a story about the leak was published, charges
against Winner were made public.

Many colour printers add the dots to documents without people ever
knowing theyre there

At that point, experts began taking a closer look at the document,

now publicly available on the web. They discovered something else
of interest: yellow dots in a roughly rectangular pattern repeated
throughout the page. They were barely visible to the naked eye, but
formed a coded design. After some quick analysis, they seemed to

1 of 6
reveal the exact date and time that the pages in question were
printed: 06:20 on 9 May, 2017 at least, this is likely to be the time
on the printers internal clock at that moment. The dots also encode
a serial number for the printer.

These microdots are well known to security researchers and civil

liberties campaigners. Many colour printers add them to documents
without people ever knowing theyre there.

In this case, the FBI has not said publicly that these microdots were
used to help identify their suspect, and the bureau declined to
comment for this article. The US Department of Justice, which
published news of the charges against Winner, also declined to
provide further clarification.

In a statement, The Intercept said, Winner faces allegations that

have not been proven. The same is true of the FBIs claims about
how it came to arrest Winner.

But the presence of microdots on what is now a high-profile

document (against the NSAs wishes) has sparked great interest.

Based on their positions when plotted against a grid, they denote

specific hours, minutes, dates and numbers

Zooming in on the document, they were pretty obvious, says Ted

Han at cataloguing platform Document Cloud, who was one of the
first to notice them. It is interesting and notable that this stuff is out
there.

Another observer was security researcher Rob Graham, who

published a blog post explaining how to identify and decode the
dots. Based on their positions when plotted against a grid, they
denote specific hours, minutes, dates and numbers. Several security

2 of 6
experts who decoded the dots came up with the same print time and
date.

Microdots have existed for many years. The Electronic Frontier

Foundation (EFF) maintains a list of colour printers known to use
them. The images below, captured by the EFF, demonstrate how to
decode them:

As well as perhaps being of interest to spies, microdots have other

potential uses, says Tim Bennett, a data analyst at software
consultancy Vector 5 who also examined the allegedly leaked NSA
document.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has an online tool that should

reveal what information the pattern encodes

People could use this to check for forgeries, he explains. If they

get a document and someone says its from 2005, [the microdots
might reveal] its from the last several months.

If you do encounter microdots on a document at some point, the EFF

has an online tool that should reveal what information the pattern
encodes.

Hidden messages

Similar kinds of steganography secret messages hidden in plain

sight have been around for much longer.

Slightly more famously, many banknotes around the world feature a

peculiar five-point pattern called the Eurion constellation. In an effort
to avoid counterfeiting, many photocopiers and scanners are
programmed not to produce copies of the banknotes when this
pattern is recognised.

READ MORE: The secret codes on banknotes

3 of 6
The NSA itself points to a fascinating historical example of tiny dots
forming messages from World War Two. German spies in Mexico
were found to have taped tiny dots inside the envelope concealing a
memo for contacts in Lisbon.

At the time, these spies were operating undercover and were trying
to get materials from Germany, such as radio equipment and secret
ink. The Allies intercepted these messages, however, and disrupted
the mission. The tiny dots used by the Germans were often simply
bits of unencrypted text miniaturised to the size of a full-stop.

This sort of communication was widely used during WWII and

afterwards, notably during the Cold War. There are reports of agents
operating for the Soviet Union, but based undercover in West
Germany and using letter drops to transmit these messages.

And today, anyone can try using microtext to protect their property
some companies, such as Alpha Dot in the UK, sell little vials of
permanent adhesive full of pin-head sized dots, which are covered
in microscopic text containing a unique serial number. If the police
recover a stolen item, the number can in theory be used to match it
with its owner.

Many examples of these miniature messages do not involve a coded

pattern as with the output of many colour printers, but they remain
good examples of how miniscule dispatches physically applied to
documents or objects can leave an identifying trail.

One project has tracked more than 45,000 complaints to printer

companies about the technology

Some forms of text-based steganography dont even use

alphanumeric characters or symbols at all. Alan Woodward, a
security expert at the University of Surrey, notes the example of

4 of 6
Snow Steganographic Nature Of Whitespace which places
spaces and tabs at the end of lines in a piece of text. The particular
number and order of these white spaces can be used to encode an
invisible message.

Locating trailing whitespace in text is like finding a polar bear in a

snowstorm, the Snow website explains.

Woodward points out, though, that there are usually multiple ways of
tracing documents back to whoever printed or accessed them.

Organisations such as the NSA have logs of every time something

is printed, not just methods of tracking paper once printed, he says.
They know that people know about the yellow dots and so they
dont rely upon it for traceability.

There is a long-running debate over whether it is ethical for printers

to be attaching this information to documents without users knowing.
In fact, there has even been a suggestion that it is a violation of
human rights and one MIT project has tracked more than 45,000
complaints to printer companies about the technology.

Still, many believe that the use of covert measures to ensure the
secrecy of classified documents remains necessary in some cases.

There are things that governments should be able to keep secret,

says Ted Han.

Is your printer sharing your history?

According to a freedom of information request to the US Secret

Service made by journalist Theo Karantsalis in 2012, these printer
manufacturers agreed to fulfil "document identification requests":

Canon

5 of 6
Brother

Casio

Hewlett-Packard

Konica

Minolta

Mita

Ricoh

Sharp

Xerox

However, he adds, I hope that folks think about their operational

security and also about how journalists can protect themselves
and their sources as well.

Join 800,000+ Future fans by liking us on Facebook, or follow us

on Twitter.

If you liked this story, sign up for the weekly bbc.com features
newsletter, called If You Only Read 6 Things This Week. A
handpicked selection of stories from BBC Future, Earth, Culture,
Capital, and Travel, delivered to your inbox every Friday.

6 of 6