TIL HP printers can exfiltrate telemetry from airgapped networks

"Future products like our soon to be released torment nexus!"

This information helps HP design future products to meet our customers’ printing needs. (With regards to pricing)

My employer for one uses all HP products. They’re the biggest pieces of shit I’ve ever used. I’d rather have an E-machine from 2005

Oh how the mighty have fallen.

Back in the day the HP Laserjet 2 was the bees knees. They were wicked workhorses that just kept going and going no matter what. Sold a ton of them when they were new.

Fast forward a number of yrs and I went into used computer biz early on with a couple people. Did great. Had this trend of hubbys cleaning out basements at wife’s request bringing in none other than old Laserjet 2’s. Business’ loved them and would buy them soon as we had them. Put an ad in computer papers saying bring in your old HPLJ2’s top dollar. Cleaned and fixed up and they flew out the door. Now you could not pay me to use HP.

One of my employers still prints MICR checks. HP was one of the only options for that.

Cheap upper management who will see the low price on a printer and will not listen to any of your arguments, explanations, emails, documents, begging, pleading...
Guess who had to support 4 HP Ink Tank pieces of shit at his last job?
I had to reinstall the drivers for those heaps of e-waste almost daily, nothing else could fix them 🙃

I don't know about being easy to make but it may be easy to buy one soon-ish.

Open Printer (Crowd Supply campaign coming soon).

I also stopped buying HP for a nearly identical reason. My brand new printer was 1 day out of warranty, I had gotten it as a gift unboxed it, and it wouldn't connect to Wi-Fi (had no hardware ports on it only WiFi).

Those fuckers told me I could either:

A. Subscribe to their ink subscription plan and they'd tell me how to fix it.

B. Pay $75 one time and they'd tell me how to fix it.

I threw that motherfucker in the trash that day and then bought a cheap Cannon (no brothers in stock) that still works over a decade later.

Fuck HP completely.

the worst part:

hp printers used to be built like tanks. I had a laserjet 4 that kept going for 17 years with only occasional toner replacements (that were cheap). crisp fucking prints (b&w tho). and hp benchtop stuff like power supplies and scopes were fucking great too.

damned fucking shame.

That's crazy lmao

Treating hardware, physical objects in your own home, like tracks that can be removed from access on Spotify at anytime. Creepy.

Imagine if one day someone just remote-locks your LG smartfridge because it's been decided you've had enough calories for today. Black Mirror can't even follow this shit rofl

HP stands for hot paninis, because that's all their laptops are good for. I had one hit critical temp and fuckin crash so hard I had to reinstall the os. Haven't given them a cent since.

Aren't they advertised as subscription-only though?

And maybe you can hack it? They usually still have the ports on the board, because changing the production chain is more expensive than the extra parts.

As someone that's worked on them, id recommend just starting out with the blast furnace. It'll save a ton of headaches down the line.

Or just turn off the data storage to the memory chip from the control panel.

Isn't the point that a hacker can use that memory to export other data?

Best way to go is a color laser printer. Brother is usually pretty good in that regard. Buy one and it'll be the last printer you need for decades. I have a Canon multifunction color laser, it was like $500 but that was 10 years ago and it's still on the first set of toner. For someone like me who doesn't print much it's the perfect choice because the ink doesn't dry out like inkjet ink.

Second best choice is a continuous ink feed printer. Epson has one called eco tank, but there are others. Basically instead of cartridges, the ink comes in bottles and you pour it into tanks in the side of the printer. Tubes carry the ink from the side tanks to the printhead. Even the official tanks hold a lot more ink than the similarly priced cartridge, and you can get knock off ink much much cheaper. No DRM, no chips, no telemetry, no bullshit. It's still an inkjet printer with all the downsides that carries, but much less printer manufacturer bullshit.

Malevolent, machiavellian, sociopathic idiots.

HP's sooo far into the negative trustworthiness side of the number-line, that it's a sickening-shame that no criminal-investigations happen on them, as I simply don't believe that people that molester-nature are entirely-legal in all their doings.

When they began requiring to have people's credit-card-info on-file, in order to be able to USE their printers ( I read in the geek-news, sometime in the last few years ), they murdered integrity from their domain.

_ /\ _

Even if you block the printer from sending data back to HP, the printer stores the data on a chip in the printer. When you finally send the printer to be recycled, they recover the data from the recycling company.

Why. Why is that a video?

They wanted to get detailed usage stats but not all printers are connected to internet, so they created this scheme where the data is collected after the user recycled the old cartridge (and that's why they do free pickup for old cartridges for businesses)

Can we assume it’s opt in by default?

Honestly, make opting out of shit that primarily benefits the company should be illegal. No one should have to opt out of giving away their data. When installing windows, you at least get the choice to opt out of some of their bullshit.

uh, you believe their assertion of that??

Yes, always blame the consumer for not knowing they need to opt-out.

Next, people will be at fault for their microwaves collecting their fingerprints because they didn't read the fine print at fucking Sears.

Pscht, don't tell them that they could extract customer (or even network) data that way.