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Comment by snomad | Hacker News Reader

> Under the AO’s new procedures, highly sensitive court documents filed with federal courts will be accepted for filing in paper form or via a secure electronic device, such as a thumb drive

Aren't thumb drives (USB) also vulnerable?

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> Aren't thumb drives (USB) also vulnerable?

Yes.

I wonder if it is also possible to find a vulnerability in OCR software that could be triggered by a scanning maliciously formated sheet of paper.

Related: JBIG2[0]. Xerox had some scanners that compressed the image to JBIG2, but the compression algorithm was so aggressive, numbers would be corrupted. Very bad for things dealing with money.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JBIG2

(off-topic) Speaking of money, modern copiers are supposed to detect and refuse to copy us currency. (haven't tried it personally)

Correct! You can't even open a detailed scan or picture of a bill in Photoshop (gave me quite a shock when I tried it and was greeted with a very serious looking warning). See this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajm1Rgu-0x0, the work that goes into fiat currencies is tremendous.

Interesting way in which this is achieved: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation

Encrypted drives like Iron Keys (tm) are typically used as a "secure" way of doing this.

Properly access controlled physical devices CAN be used as a secure way of doing things.

See: hardware cryptocurrency wallets, trusted access modules, etc.

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