Comment by decimalenough 7 days ago
Per Wikipedia, the dots' "arrangement encodes the serial number of the device, date and time of the printing", so all you really need to spoof somebody else's printer is the serial number. Which can likely these days even be accessed remotely through printer settings.
Or just go to a big box retailer, grab a couple of serial numbers off of the packaging, and then randomize per page.
Better than nothing, but you probably don't want to produce a document that purports to have been printed by three different printers that were likely only in the same place during a relatively short period surrounding when you went to see them. You'd be better off just making up serial numbers.
Nah, it's even better. "These messages were printed on a variety of different printers on three separate dates, but all of the printers were in an Office Depot during that time. Now we just need to go through the footage of those days to see who was in that store on all three days." Meanwhile, you're in another state on those days, doing crime.
why randomize a mac address?
If everything you print has the same fictitious serial number, it's still a stable identifier that can be triangulated.
It depends on how it gets the serial number. If it reads it from internal memory then spoofing your own serial number on each document print is the obvious workaround.
No need to examine the printer. Just find a sheet of paper that printer printed, decode the dots, and then print your super illegal whatever with their printer's dots and a timestamp that makes sense for whatever you're framing them for doing. Nobody's ever gonna believe "the dots were a lie." They sound too much like fingerprints.