Black fax

Last updated

The term black fax refers to a prank fax transmission, consisting of one or more pages entirely filled with a uniform black tone. The sender's intention is generally to use up as much of the recipient's fax ink, toner, or thermal paper as possible, thus costing the recipient money, as well as denying the recipient use of their own machine (similar to computer-based denial of service attacks). [1] [2] This is made easier because fax transmission protocols compress the solid black image very well, so a very short fax call can produce many pages.

Contents

Use

Black faxes have been used to harass large institutions or government departments, to retaliate against the senders of junk faxes, or merely as simple pranks. [3] [4]

The basic principle of a black fax can be extended to form a black fax attack. In this case, one or more sheets are fed halfway through the sender's fax machine and taped end to end, forming an endless loop that cycles through the machine. Not only can solid black be used, but also images which will repeat endlessly on the receiver's machine until its toner runs out. [5]

History

The introduction of computer-based facsimile systems (combined with integrated document imaging solutions) at major corporations now means that black faxes are unlikely to cause problems for them. On the other hand, the ability of computer modems to send faxes offers new avenues for abuse. A program could be used to generate hundreds of pages of highly compressed, pure black – or huge volumes of relevant-looking, original, non-repeating high-black-density junk, just as effective but far more difficult to counteract – and send them very quickly to the target fax machine.

Black faxes and fax loops are similar (in both intention and implementation) to lace cards.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fax</span> Method of transmitting images, often of documents

Fax, sometimes called telecopying or telefax, is the telephonic transmission of scanned printed material, normally to a telephone number connected to a printer or other output device. The original document is scanned with a fax machine, which processes the contents as a single fixed graphic image, converting it into a bitmap, and then transmitting it through the telephone system in the form of audio-frequency tones. The receiving fax machine interprets the tones and reconstructs the image, printing a paper copy. Early systems used direct conversions of image darkness to audio tone in a continuous or analog manner. Since the 1980s, most machines transmit an audio-encoded digital representation of the page, using data compression to transmit areas that are all-white or all-black, more quickly.

Run-length encoding (RLE) is a form of lossless data compression in which runs of data are stored as a single occurrence of that data value and a count of its consecutive occurrences, rather than as the original run. As an imaginary example of the concept, when encoding an image built up from colored dots, the sequence "green green green green green green green green green" is shortened to "green x 9". This is most efficient on data that contains many such runs, for example, simple graphic images such as icons, line drawings, games, and animations. For files that do not have many runs, encoding them with RLE could increase the file size.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Denial-of-service attack</span> Type of cyber-attack

In computing, a denial-of-service attack is a cyber-attack in which the perpetrator seeks to make a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users by temporarily or indefinitely disrupting services of a host connected to a network. Denial of service is typically accomplished by flooding the targeted machine or resource with superfluous requests in an attempt to overload systems and prevent some or all legitimate requests from being fulfilled. The range of attacks varies widely, spanning from inundating a server with millions of requests to slow its performance, overwhelming a server with a substantial amount of invalid data, to submitting requests with an illegitimate IP address.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">IP address spoofing</span> Creating IP packets using a false IP address

In computer networking, IP address spoofing or IP spoofing is the creation of Internet Protocol (IP) packets with a false source IP address, for the purpose of impersonating another computing system.

Wardialing is a technique to automatically scan a list of telephone numbers, usually dialing every number in a local area code to search for modems, computers, bulletin board systems and fax machines. Hackers use the resulting lists for various purposes: hobbyists for exploration, and crackers—malicious hackers who specialize in breaching computer security—for guessing user accounts, or locating modems that might provide an entry-point into computer or other electronic systems. It may also be used by security personnel, for example, to detect unauthorized devices, such as modems or faxes, on a company's telephone network.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Answering machine</span> Telephone answering device

An answering machine, answerphone, or message machine, also known as telephone messaging machine in the UK and some Commonwealth countries, ansaphone or ansafone, or telephone answering device (TAD), is used for answering telephone calls and recording callers' messages.

Hashcash is a proof-of-work system used to limit email spam and denial-of-service attacks. Hashcash was proposed in 1997 by Adam Back and described more formally in Back's 2002 paper "Hashcash – A Denial of Service Counter-Measure". In Hashcash the client has to concatenate a random number with a string several times and hash this new string. It then has to do so over and over until a hash beginning with a certain number of zeros is found.

Junk faxes are a form of telemarketing where unsolicited advertisements are sent via fax transmission. Junk faxes are the faxed equivalent of spam or junk mail. Proponents of this advertising medium often use the terms broadcast fax or fax advertising to avoid the negative connotation of the term junk fax. Junk faxes are generally considered to be a nuisance since they waste toner, ink and paper in fax machines.

Radiofacsimile, radiofax or HF fax is an analogue mode for transmitting grayscale images via high frequency (HF) radio waves. It was the predecessor to slow-scan television (SSTV). It was the primary method of sending photographs from remote sites from the 1930s to the early 1970s. It is still in limited use for transmitting weather charts and information to ships at sea.

The Junk Fax Prevention Act (JFPA) of 2005, Pub. L. 109–21 (text)(PDF), 119 Stat. 359 (2005), was passed by the United States Congress and signed into law by President George W. Bush on July 9, 2005. The law amends the Communications Act of 1934, significantly altering some aspects of prior amendments made by the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 and the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 as they relate to the issue of junk fax.

A fax server is a system installed in a local area network (LAN) server that allows computer users whose computers are attached to the LAN to send and receive fax messages.

A called subscriber identification is a string that identifies a specific fax machine as the recipient of a fax.

Email spoofing is the creation of email messages with a forged sender address. The term applies to email purporting to be from an address which is not actually the sender's; mail sent in reply to that address may bounce or be delivered to an unrelated party whose identity has been faked. Disposable email address or "masked" email is a different topic, providing a masked email address that is not the user's normal address, which is not disclosed, but forwards mail sent to it to the user's real address.

Internet fax, e-fax, or online fax is the use of the internet and internet protocols to send a fax (facsimile), rather than using a standard telephone connection and a fax machine. A distinguishing feature of Internet fax, compared to other Internet communications such as email, is the ability to exchange fax messages with traditional telephone-based fax machines.

3D Fax is a computer program, developed for Microsoft Windows by InfoImaging Technologies in the mid-1990s, for file transfer via fax. The program encodes a file into an image, which the user would then print and send via a fax machine or transmit directly from the computer using a fax modem. The recipient would then scan the transmitted image or receive it via a fax modem, and use 3D Fax to decode it back to its original binary form.

T.38 is an ITU recommendation for allowing transmission of fax over IP networks (FoIP) in real time.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anonymous (hacker group)</span> Decentralized hacktivist group

Anonymous is a decentralized international activist and hacktivist collective and movement primarily known for its various cyberattacks against several governments, government institutions and government agencies, corporations and the Church of Scientology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">February 2010 Australian cyberattacks</span> DoS attack against Australian government by the Anonymous group

The February 2010 Australian cyberattacks were a series of denial-of-service attacks conducted by the Anonymous online community against the Australian government in response to proposed web censorship regulations. Operation Titstorm was the name given to the cyber attacks by the perpetrators. They resulted in lapses of access to government websites on 10 and 11 February 2010. This was accompanied by emails, faxes, and phone calls harassing government offices. The actual size of the attack and number of perpetrators involved is unknown but it was estimated that the number of systems involved ranged from the hundreds to the thousands. The amount of traffic caused disruption on multiple government websites.

The technical process called as a whole hereinafter "registered fax" consists in sending an electronic document by fax where both the content is certified and the delivery to the recipient is guaranteed.
It serves the purpose of creating legal evidence that unalterable information has been shared between the sender and the receiver of the registered fax.

<i>We Are Legion</i> 2012 American film

We Are Legion: The Story of the Hacktivists is a 2012 documentary film about the workings and beliefs of the self-described "hacktivist" collective, Anonymous.

References

  1. Bartlett, Jamie (2014). The Dark Net: Inside the Digital Underworld. Random House. p. 36. ISBN   978-0434023158 . Retrieved 15 June 2017.
  2. Schmundt, Hilmar (February 17, 2011). "Investigators Pursue the Internet Activists of Anonymous". Spiegel Online. Retrieved 15 June 2017.
  3. "Hackers turn to 'low-tech' fax in protesting cybercrime law". GMA News. October 6, 2012. Retrieved 15 June 2017.
  4. Greenberg, Andy (November 30, 2012). "Anonymous Hackers Swat At Syrian Government Websites In Reprisal For Internet Blackout". Forbes. Retrieved 15 June 2017.
  5. Del Gandio, Jason; Nocella II, Anthony (2014). The Terrorization of Dissent: Corporate Repression, Legal Corruption, and the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act. Lantern Books. ISBN   978-1590564318.