[Cryptography] Paper check security

[Tom Mitchell]

On Thu, Oct 1, 2015 at 8:00 PM, Jerry Leichter <leichter at lrw.com> wrote:

>
> ...The issue with published images of checks has already caused individual
> bank account owners problems.  These are uncommon but real. Massive
> breaches
> that disclose many images would prove difficult at best to contain.
>
> Just what novel issues are involved here?  What's written on a check has
> never been secret:  You obviously hand it over to anyone you give a check
> to.  So the security of the system could never rely on the secrecy of any
> of that stuff. vast majority of checks are computer-generated and have no
> useful signature anyway.  They are "truncated" - photographed and destroyed
> - without anyone being in a position to check all the fancy watermarks,
> microprinting, and other neat paper security features.
>

Nothing novel except that almost all checks are now imaged.
What was once a novel issue could become massive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knuth_reward_check

There have been other cases but this one is famous in this area.


-- 
  T o m    M i t c h e l l
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