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posted by martyb on Wednesday June 10 2020, @05:07AM   Printer-friendly
from the the-next-generation-of-forensics dept.

High definition scans and image recognition are combined to produce a unique signature for any part:

Everything needed to trace, track or certify any individual manufactured part is already present on the part itself, according to Brian Crowley, CEO of Alitheon, a startup company focused on object traceability. The surface detail of a manufactured part is unique in the same way fingerprints are, he says. And, importantly, off-the-shelf imaging technology — notably including the cameras in our phones — is now capable of accurately capturing this distinctive surface-level detail. The result is a new possibility for identifying parts, arguably better and more reliable than serial numbers. Alitheon’s technology for using this surface detail for part ID is called “FeaturePrint.”

Sorry if this seems like a soylvertizement--I don't have any connection to the company, it just seemed like an interesting new technology, with wide-ranging consequences. While initially this might be used internal to factories that need to track every part of an assembly and avoid bad parts or counterfeits slipping into production, other applications seem possible. For example, there is no point in filing the serial number off that gun, unless you also deface all the surfaces on *all* the external and internal parts.


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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by mhajicek on Wednesday June 10 2020, @05:19AM (14 children)

    by mhajicek (51) on Wednesday June 10 2020, @05:19AM (#1005671)

    So instead of a dozen digit serial number, you have a multi gigabyte scan file. How efficient.

    --
    The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
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  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 10 2020, @05:28AM (8 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 10 2020, @05:28AM (#1005677)

    If you go and polish, peen, coat, or treat parts after completion, what happens to their scan compatibility? This isn't effective if you're trying to hide something in plain sight, but if you have something you no longer wanted traceable, adding a polish step along with a serial removal, while pricey and time consuming, is not really that much added effort for the reduction in trace-ability.

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Rich on Wednesday June 10 2020, @05:41AM (7 children)

      by Rich (945) on Wednesday June 10 2020, @05:41AM (#1005683) Journal

      If you really want to keep traceability, you'll add an x-ray or ultrasonic scan or something similar to the data source. Parties interested in using untraced parts would have to replicate the whole part then.

      (On a related topic, I've always wondered how expensive it might be to replicate a Ferrari 250 GTO, which is effectively a bunch of low-tech parts traded at two-figure-million amounts, down to the last part, including all castings and millings, somewhere in Eastern Europe...)

      • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 10 2020, @07:44AM (5 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 10 2020, @07:44AM (#1005713)

        I've always wondered how expensive it might be to replicate a Ferrari 250 GTO

        v12 engine attached to a chassis with a couple of seats and a bit of tinfoil wrapped around... would the result be any different from a kit car?

        i think though that when you buy a ferrari you are not just buying the sum of its parts you are buying generations of expertise and ridiculously high standards of craftsmanship that may or may not be matched by your DIY effort also a badge and a very special shade of red ;)

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 10 2020, @12:58PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 10 2020, @12:58PM (#1005776)

          You are not the first one to have the idea of a replica of an expensive collector car. For example, Pur Sang in Argentina build exact replicas of several Bugatti and Alfa-Romeo models from the 1920-1930 eras. The price is *considerably* less than the genuine article. They use (to a great extent) the same kind of craft methods as the original manufacturers. Prices start at something like USD $150,000 and go up from there.

        • (Score: 2) by Rich on Wednesday June 10 2020, @01:34PM (3 children)

          by Rich (945) on Wednesday June 10 2020, @01:34PM (#1005785) Journal

          generations of expertise and ridiculously high standards of craftsmanship that may or may not be matched by your DIY effort

          The "generations" is about half a generation (1947-1962) and the ridiculously high standards at that time were mostly about perfection in scavenging the waste parts bins of mass manufacturers for the cheapest stuff that would fit. They only got serious about the "bespoke" stuff since about the 430. (I'm still traumatized from a scrapyard visit decades ago where I wanted to recover the precious tail lights of a Rover 3500 that was dumped into the press before my eyes as I approached...)

          I'll take bets that any self respecting Polish backyard shop can work to higher specs today than the folks at the Italian countryside in the early 60s. The hard bit for them wouldn't be to create somthing that fits and is better than the original part, but to create something that is precisely so crappy that it is indistinguishable from the original. It might get good enough to get away with - as long as there is no part identity tracking like in the TFA.

          And that kind of closes the circle, that if some sort of internal structure fingerprinting of a part is registered via hashes, the only way to escape traceability is to completely re-engineer it.

          • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday June 10 2020, @01:48PM (2 children)

            by JoeMerchant (3937) on Wednesday June 10 2020, @01:48PM (#1005790)

            The whole thing about "rare old Ferraris" is that the accepted history is well documented and easily available.

            If a "previously lost" serial number of a particular car shows up on the market, more likely than not there's documentation of what happened to that particular serial number and the current seller will have to explain how it transformed from a burning, twisted ball of metal into the thing that he is currently trying to sell. Sometimes just the "intellectual property" of a serial number carries some value, but usually the high dollar collectors like to know that they are sitting in the very car that Stirling Moss drove to victory yadda yadda.

            --
            🌻🌻 [google.com]
            • (Score: 2) by Rich on Wednesday June 10 2020, @03:07PM (1 child)

              by Rich (945) on Wednesday June 10 2020, @03:07PM (#1005825) Journal

              Yeah. You'd probably not want to claim it's a proper GTO, but hey, a 250 SWB messed up in in a bad attempt to look like a GTO in the early 80s, with an African paper trail of a 400i (with a legit 400i serial) would be good enough for single-figure-million entry level collectors. :)

              • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday June 10 2020, @05:37PM

                by JoeMerchant (3937) on Wednesday June 10 2020, @05:37PM (#1005890)

                If I'm going to spend US$150K+ on a custom car, I'd like it to look like a 250 - but I'd want it to drive a hell of a lot more modern than a "real" 250. My 100,000 miles in a 1980 Honda Civic was more than enough lo-tech driving thrill for me.

                --
                🌻🌻 [google.com]
      • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday June 10 2020, @01:43PM

        by JoeMerchant (3937) on Wednesday June 10 2020, @01:43PM (#1005787)

        Full custom sports car builds (of relatively low-tech stuff like the 250 GTO) run in the 100-200K range. For that amount, you can series produce 250 knockoffs that won't fetch even $100K on the open market, because the people who are pushing the values up to $2M+ don't really care about the functionality of the car, they are after the history, the rarity, etc.

        Same way you can print a new Babe Ruth baseball card and it won't be worth the price of the chewing gum.

        --
        🌻🌻 [google.com]
  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Rich on Wednesday June 10 2020, @05:32AM (3 children)

    by Rich (945) on Wednesday June 10 2020, @05:32AM (#1005679) Journal

    you have a multi gigabyte scan file. How efficient.

    Not necessarily. Hashes might do. Think about how Shazam works, and works really well.

    I'll give the article a pass, even if it might be a bit of a Soylvertisement, because it's definitely a new idea.

    • (Score: 2) by mhajicek on Wednesday June 10 2020, @05:53PM (2 children)

      by mhajicek (51) on Wednesday June 10 2020, @05:53PM (#1005900)

      I'm not that educated on the subject, but doesn't a hash change if you change even the tiniest bit of the input? Get a wear mark or blemish and that could completely alter the hash rendering it useless.

      --
      The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
      • (Score: 2) by Rich on Wednesday June 10 2020, @06:28PM (1 child)

        by Rich (945) on Wednesday June 10 2020, @06:28PM (#1005928) Journal

        doesn't a hash change if you change even the tiniest bit of the input?

        A classic hash, yes. Here we have some sort of image hash, which is a different beast. I have no idea how they work in detail (probably something with multidimensional proximities). I know Shazam had their paper up for song hashes (I vaguely remember they had something with tight beat timing), and there are certainly resources on image hashes on the net.

        Anyway, my epiphany in this context was when Shazam was new, the owner of the metal bar downtown wanted to show off how amazing it is. I took the challenge, to mock it, held it up for 10 seconds in the noisy bar with a very mediocre sound system, and there it was on the display: "Aiwass Aeon" by "1349", including cover artwork (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5x3Oxmy66U8 [youtube.com]). Recognized by 10 seconds right out of the middle at around 1:10 among roughly all songs ever for sale... Unholy Cow!

        • (Score: 2, Touché) by khallow on Wednesday June 10 2020, @08:19PM

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday June 10 2020, @08:19PM (#1005967) Journal

          Here we have some sort of image hash, which is a different beast.

          Doesn't matter. The real problem here is that you can alter the part so that it differs from its original scan by much more than another part off the line or a decent forgery. No magic hash is going to fix that problem.

  • (Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Wednesday June 10 2020, @06:31AM

    by fustakrakich (6150) on Wednesday June 10 2020, @06:31AM (#1005695) Journal

    and then... the power cuts out

    --
    La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..