The determination of identity and uniqueness of color laser printouts of Ricoh® brand by Adobe® Creative Cloud Photoshop® 2018

Abstract

Background: Printer forensics is a sub-branch of digital forensic science encompassing the identification of the source of any printout by different means. Over the world, still today, there is no digital forensic lab able to identify the source of the color laser printer seized in forgery crimes by a certain scientific method. Therefore, the determination for the identity and uniqueness of color laser printouts have become one of the most challenging recently investigated in digital forensic labs. Method: In the present study, one type of the most common brand of color laser printers called Ricoh® was selected. Three defined steps, printing, scanning, and extracting, were applied to measure and calculate the obtained data for achieving our target. Adobe Creative Cloud Photoshop 2018 was used as a forensic tool for image processing. Results: In our study, 400 color laser printout samples from 93 Ricoh® color laser printers with different serial numbers were investigated. The study results successfully present the basic coded dot matrix pattern (CDMP) that characterizes and corresponds to the Ricoh® color laser machines with a 100% accuracy ratio. Conclusion: The determination of identity and uniqueness of color laser printouts of Ricoh® brand was achieved with a high accuracy ratio (100%). Adobe Creative Cloud Photoshop 2018 was a versatile software applied as a steganalysis tool for extracting the steganography information embedded in all undertaken color laser printouts.