Xerox to update scan software after switched number outcry
Source: BBC News
Xerox says it will release a software patch to tackle the fact that scans made with its Workcentre copiers can result in numbers and letters being changed in saved files.
It says the issue only occurs if people alter its machines' default settings.
However, it acknowledges that referring to the affected mode as "normal" on the devices' selection screens needs to be reconsidered.
There had been claims that the flaw could put lives in danger.
Xerox says the problem is the result of a compression technique widely used in the industry.
It suggests the vast majority of the machines' users are unlikely to ever experience the switched number effect..snip
'Dramatic reaction'
Xerox says that 14 of its models dating back to 2005 offer Jbig2 compression, representing hundreds of thousands of individual units.
Mr Dastin said that oil rigs, the military and clients in developing markets were among the owners most likely to have switched their copiers to the setting.
They would have done so to make it quicker to send files over the internet when only slow data speeds were available.
But he stressed that other uses for the copiers were not affected.
Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23610405
Xerox Change Documents After Scanning
The next time you scan a document, you may need to check whether all the numbers add up. A glitch recently discovered in Xerox's WorkCentre machines has been changing numbers on scanned documents, possibly for several years without the company's noticing.
The glitch was discovered by David Kriesel, a computer science researcher at the University of Bonn in Germany. He initially thought he was the butt of a practical joke when an architecture firm claimed that numbers on blueprints that Kriesel scanned earlier were altered. "I thought they were kidding," he told ABC News. "But I tried it myself without and the numbers changed [after being scanned]."
The glitch doesn't affect documents scanned using the machine's default settings. However, if the user changes the WorkCentre's compression settings, this type of error can occur. Francis Tse, a principal engineer at Xerox, wrote on the company's blog to address the glitch..snip
Kriesel said that it's more than just a resolution problem, but that JBIG2 actually changes the numbers in the scanned image. He explained that the document is segmented into discrete sections and that the WorkCentre machine compares each section to a library of stored patches. "You only need to save a representative patch," he said. "If a section looks like the number 8, then it gets replaced by the representative 8 patch."
Unfortunately, replacing each section with representative patches can result in errors. Kriesel documented some of these changes in his blog. Some models of the Workcentre machines consistently make the same substitution errors, for example replacing the same 6s with the same 8s. Others models make arbitrary number substitutions that are not consistent each time the machine scans a document.
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/xerox-machines-change-documents-scanning/story?id=19895331
Perhaps this could explain some unfortunate circumstances
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