HP CEO Says They Brick Printers That Use Third-Party Ink Because of … Hackers::The company says it wants to protect you from “viruses.” Experts are skeptical.
Meanwhile, here in reality land:
People are downgrading their firmware to ancient versions likely containing old CVEs because fuck HP and their printer cartridge mafia.
Why does the ink cartridge need to be so smart that it has CVEs?
The printer firmware, not the cartridge.
Ah my bad
What if they DIDN’T have a chip in the ink cartridge, and just used it as a container that could be refilled and used in every printer they made? No hacking the cartridge then.
No, that’s crazy talk!
No but see then you could get hacked through…uh…nanobots in the ink! Yeah. Real problem, totally possible, definitely happens.
What harm are they saying these “hackable” cartridges can even do? Brick the printers? So they are preemptively bricking the printers because… the hackers might… brick the printers? Makes sense! I expect better from corpo technobabble. This is just idiotic.
Especially since they sell brand new printers for the price of about 3 ink cartridges.
Site won’t let me read the article, but if I remember correctly from another one of these threads, they’re saying that a hacked cartridge could be used to load malware onto the computer itself. If true, the printer itself is hilariously insecure, as are the drivers they provide.
Right? Instead of bricking the printer they can make their software secure. But we all know the reality is they want to punish anyone who dares to buy third party ink which is why they ignore vulnerabilities, and probably created them in the first place. Just a sad state of affairs. Part of me wants to believe consumers and even corporations will rebel against this obvious BS, but they’ll probably make bank.
Not saying it’s correct, but it would be an interesting way to make sure the printer you installed ink in had “upgraded” firmware. Make the ink carry the firmware and flash when installed…
“They’re hacking our profits!” - HP CEO
I’m not big on gambling. But I feel I could bet that their software/firmware is so bad that someone could still hack the network via the bricked printer
Anybody saying they “protect against viruses” in 2024 is selling something to boomers.
Those are ink printers so this track.
There is nothing quite like a company praying on the ignorance of people who don’t know that you can’t get a virus on your devices by using 3rd party ink. The ink itself cannot do anything on its own to harm your PC, as far as I’m aware.
Well… turns out they have a serial connection from the printer to the cartridge, all in the name of DRM. And you could put nefarious things on the chip of the cartridge, which would then be able to connect to the computer through the printer. All because of them wanting to thwart third party cartridges, so a problem of their own making, basically.
What kind of “experts” are they? I don’t know much about hacking but I call bullshit.
So what they are saying is, their design is so terrible that a drm module can cause their printer to become a vulnerability on the network.
Or they are just lying for profits…
Either way, they’ve already gone beyond any level of integrity I can support. I already wasn’t buying any HP products and will continue not doing so. What else can you do?
It unfortunate given their reputation of old. Current management is trying to milk any remnants of that reputation, but they’re not the same: just another scammy consumer products company with shitty products. Cross them off your list and let them fade. Always remember that sometime cheap or even free is just not worth it
“We bricked your printer to protect you.”
Some YouTuber said the only evidence if this was an hp document of their internal testing. So instead of fixing the security hole they monetize it.
“Some youtuber”? Lol great source you have there. But yes, it’s been reported that it was HP’s lab that found what they concluded could somehow maybe be used as an attack vector. And other security experts have disagreed with that statement. Who knows.
(and yes I know the irony of me not providing any source at all)
That’s not irony, that’s hypocrisy.
Their source is better than your source. They at least indicated that it was word-of-mouth and didn’t try and present it as anything but that.
Maybe my communication was poor. Or maybe we have different definitions of hypocrisy. I never meant to claim my info to be of higher trustworthiness. Had I meant to do that I would have dug up my source, which would have been easy to do. Without source I’m just a rando commenting and I just wanted to highlight the humor in sourcing specifically “some youtuber”, which is the go-to source for crackpot theories (not YouTube, but poorly defined unknown random person on YouTube). My intention was not to be the bringer of the truth. I apologize for any confusion.
When I watch YouTube I’m usually in total brain drain mode and details have to be really interesting to be remembered.
Makes perfect sense. Bill Gates puts Chinese 5G into third party printer ink. It’s used to activate the spikes in vaccinations.
If there are viruses that can infect a printer from a grey market ink cartridge, 9:1 HP released it into the wild, on purpose. They already know how to write viruses, all of their printing software qualifies.
You guys don’t use the printers that allow you to pour liquid ink in the tanks?
HP trying to pull a “Google” and say it’s all for our own protection. :)
