Printers Could Be the Next Attack Vector 175
Posted
by
Soulskill
from the pc-load-letter-what-does-that-mean dept.
from the pc-load-letter-what-does-that-mean dept.
New submitter rcoxdav writes "Researchers have found that the upgradeable firmware on some laser printers can be easily updated and compromised. The updated firmware could then be used to do anything from overheating the printer to compromising a network. Quoting: 'In one demonstration of an attack based on the flaw, Stolfo and fellow researcher Ang Cui showed how a hijacked computer could be given instructions that would continuously heat up the printer’s fuser – which is designed to dry the ink once it’s applied to paper – eventually causing the paper to turn brown and smoke. In that demonstration, a thermal switch shut the printer down – basically, causing it to self-destruct – before a fire started, but the researchers believe other printers might be used as fire starters, giving computer hackers a dangerous new tool that could allow simple computer code to wreak real-world havoc.'"
Obligatory (Score:5, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lp0_on_fire [wikipedia.org]
NExt??? (Score:5, Informative)
You have been able to use HP jetdirect printers as an attack vector for decades.
IT seems that Computer security is not remembering how attacks were happening from the 90's and earlier.
Hell you could make Xerox solid ink printers burn the paper by sending them a corrupted PDF. it would stop in mid print with the paper on the drum and under the fixer running full power.
researchers find attack vector known for 20 years (Score:5, Informative)
Re:"THE next attack vector"? (Score:4, Informative)
More likely (Score:5, Informative)
Instead of burning the printer, I would more worry about someone logging all the print jobs. Long ago I joked with some coworkers that this wouldn't be too tough on a typical Windows network. Just change your IP address or machine name to match the printer, and you could intercept the jobs. I wanted to insert spelling errors or Dilbert comics into the document. But someone could be malicious and send the information to a competitor or a hedge fund.
Gah. (Score:5, Informative)
the printer’s fuser – which is designed to dry the ink once it’s applied to paper
Stupid submitter makes my head hurt.
There is no ink in laser printers. There is toner, a bone-dry powder that is fused to the paper by the fuser, generally a very warm cylinder.
Ink-jet printers use ink, but those droplets are so small they dry into the paper without having to be heated.
Facts, use them.
Re:researchers find attack vector known for 20 yea (Score:4, Informative)
It's not that the printer checks for firmware at the outset of every job, it's that there is an interactive interpreter which has at its disposal such handy commands as "udw_write_mem" allowing you to scribble all over the printer's memory space and "udw_srec_upload" which imports an SREC with new firmware and jumps to the provided execute address. Also plenty of things for moving print heads, checking hardware state, and managing nvram variables. So the payload can be embedded anywhere in the print job. FWIW.