HP CEO says they brick printers that use third-party ink because of ‘hackers’.::HP is pushing over-the-air firmware updates to its printers, bricking them if they are using third-party ink cartridges. But don’t…
In other words, don’t buy HP printers since their CEO admitted they’re so vulnerable that you’re constantly in danger!
Why do ink cartridges have chips in them anyway HP? This wouldn’t even be a problem if they never added them in the first place
They say it’s tell the printer how much ink is left…
But it’s so they can disable a cartridge that’s been in a machine X months instead of working till it runs out/dry.
So yeah, it doesn’t need to be there.
Is that all it does? Is HP so backwards that they introduce a whole new attack surface just to store a date stamp?
…Actually don’t answer that.
It’s easy to have a printer cartridge that works till it’s out.
But they introduced the chip years ago (over a decade?) with the excuse it provides the warning when ink is low. Which is a good thing, they just tacked on the “stop working after X months” on as well.
They tried to cut off 3rd party with the chip, and lost that case.
So this is what they came up with to get it retried.
But most importantly: HP were the ones that came up with this idea and paid someone to develop it…
So not only did they introduce the attack surface, when no one noticed they paid someone to notice and are now telling everyone
So even worse than what you said
Cue a queue of cute malware that actually does seek out HP printers just to trick them into self-destructing. Good job HP. Your printers are now targets for malware that doesn’t exist without your help.
You can queue (stand in line), you can cue (signal or cause to start). Not complete definitions. They sound the same and there are cases where you could use either in an otherwise-identical sentence for a valid but different meaning.
Inb4 capture HP’s kill code with Wireshark and forward it to every printer on shodan
That would be so cool if someone actually did that. Because at that point there would be a ton of people with a decision to make…do I go to HP and get screwed or do I go elsewhere?
If you use third party inks you might get hacked, so we’re going to go ahead and hack you in a ransomware style attack by locking your personal property until you comply and use our inks. Get fucked.
