Break-Open One-Shot Password Stores

Igor Mozolevsky mozolevsky at gmail.com
Mon Feb 27 12:10:18 GMT 2012


On 27 February 2012 11:00, Paul Barnfather <lists at barnfather.net> wrote:

> How about the way banks issue PIN codes for ATM and credit cards? They
> come in the form of a printed letter with a neat little plastic
> tear-off tab which makes it very clear if the PIN has been read by
> someone else.
> They seem to be a cheap and effective way of storing and communicating
> a "read once" password.
>
> I assume they are fairly resistant to casual tampering.
>
> Does anyone know if they are printed with a conventional printer, or
> do they require specialised hardware to produce?


I would hazard a guess that you can "engineer" the same effect with
carbon paper and a dot-matrix printer (with its ribbon removed), so
long as you don't have needle impressions on the outer layer of the
paper (so you'd probably need to add a layer of paper for padding).


-- 
Igor M.



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