Has anyone considered adding funtionality to HP printer drivers as a mini-project?

Specifically the removal of the built in image censor that works by detecting a small geometric pattern in the image and on detection of said image, truncates the output to around 1inch in height and places the URL hxxp:\www.rulesforuse.org\ underneath.

I have googled and found people adding functionality to other high end software packages that include the same image detection but nothing on the printer driver front.

A copy of the detected image can be seen at hxxp://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/eurion.pdf which shows the 5 circles that the software looks for.

A Slashdot article on the subject (for those that are interested) is here hxxp://slashdot.org/articles/04/01/20/1734209.shtml?tid=158&tid=99

The thing that worries me most about this is not the currency aspect. Its what happens if someone puts the circle design on their webpage images? Does this prevent printing, copying, etc. web images? Effectively, there's now a standard symbol for "do not copy". (quoted from slashdot)

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That URL you say it adds underneath "illegal outprints" might be a good starting point if you're lucky. Can you find any string references to it in the driver (or any file related to it), or were they at least clever enough to encrypt it (or maybe store it as an image or similar)?

Nope - they weren't clever enough to encrypt it

I can find the string linked in several DAT files and one EXE. From a few simple tests, I can tell that its the EXE that holds the starting point at least as renaming the EXE prevents printing, altering the URL text in the file alters the text that appears on output and there is a jump that can be 'switched' to prevent the text appearing at all.

However, the print output is still truncated

I thought it might make an interesting mini project to try and track down the actual routine that searches for the 'watermark' rather than just switching jumps until the picture appears!

Well, are those drivers publicly downloadable somewhere? Otherwise we kinda have a problem. And don't post the URL if they are, just tell us if they are.

Anyway, tracing back from the code that references that string, it most likely shouldn't be too hard to find the whole truncation algorithm either, have you tried that?

Yes they are. A simple Google provides you with many many download targets.



I have looked back in the code but can't find a specific entry point into the routine I have been fiddling with which deals with the url being added. I'm still looking though but from what I can glean its not a simple call to a routine should this be detected

But I'm still looking