this post was submitted on 25 Jan 2024
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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.

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[–] [email protected] 73 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Amazing how completely absurd things like this come out of their mouths and they expect people to believe it. Insulting is what it is. We’ve had an HP AIO printer for a decade + that is “bricked” because of their stupid DRM. I can’t even use the scanner because we have non-HP ink. Never gonna buy another HP product.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 9 months ago

That's literally a crime. HP exceeded authorized access to your computer (specifically, the microcontroller in your printer) in order to damage it. I don't know if the criminal complaint should be directed to the FBI or the FTC, but either way, you should file one.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (11 children)

You put the wrong thing in and they take away all functionality.

I, once again, am forced to ask...when do we start burning things?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 9 months ago (2 children)

HP is responsible for PC LOAD LETTER.

Never forget..

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago

What are you complaining about? Those were the glory days of HP.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago

THOSE MOTHERFUCKERS

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[–] [email protected] 39 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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........

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 9 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Why does the ink cartridge need to be so smart that it has CVEs?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

The printer firmware, not the cartridge.

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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!

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago

No but see then you could get hacked through...uh...nanobots in the ink! Yeah. Real problem, totally possible, definitely happens.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 9 months ago (2 children)

It's always so sad to see how far HP has fallen. They used to be such an innovative company and produce so many good products but then they decided to not anymore.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago

I don’t know. They’ve been fucking up for a while now. At least back to the whole compaq mess.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Makes perfect sense. Bill Gates puts Chinese 5G into third party printer ink. It's used to activate the spikes in vaccinations.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

What gives Space Lasers their bright pure red color?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Thats actually a misunderstanding the lasers aren't any brighter but the stuff they put in the chemtrails that makes the frogs gay adds a bright glow around the laser.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

And the stuff they put in chemtrails are the original RNA packets that will change your DNA. The covid vaccine is what activates them.

(But seriously, pretty much every covid vaccine conspiracy is just the chemtrail conspiracy repackaged.)

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 9 months ago

So the bricking is because there are chips in the ink cartridges. And why are there chips in the cartridges? Because HP wants to charge exorbitant rates for ink.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 9 months ago (1 children)

This makes me want to spread malware through HP printers

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

Careful or they'll hire you!

[–] [email protected] 15 points 9 months ago

Imagine if they put engineers time and money into developing faster, lighter, printers or faster, easier to use scanners or next generation OCR software or some sort of enterprise printing solution that doesn't make me want to throw up.

No. Physical DRM only.

Also, their laptops and business workstations have been quite bad in my experience.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago

"They're hacking our profits!" - HP CEO

[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago

HP trying to pull a "Google" and say it's all for our own protection. :)

[–] [email protected] 11 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

HACK THE ~~PLANET~~ PRINTER INK CARTRIDGES!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

Username checks out

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Anybody saying they "protect against viruses" in 2024 is selling something to boomers.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago

Oh. The ink is the issue. I see. My bad HP. I thought hackers hacked using software.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago

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

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago (1 children)

HP is doing what now?

Sounds to me like HP themselves are the hackers, exceeding authorized access in order to destroy people's property. Prosecute HP!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

Here's the summary for the wikipedia article you mentioned in your comment:

The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 (CFAA) is a United States cybersecurity bill that was enacted in 1986 as an amendment to existing computer fraud law (18 U. S. C. § 1030), which had been included in the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984. Prior to computer-specific criminal laws, computer crimes were prosecuted as mail and wire fraud, but the applying law was often insufficient.

^to^ ^opt^ ^out^^,^ ^pm^ ^me^ ^'optout'.^ ^article^ ^|^ ^about^

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago

Oh (buy) Brother!

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago (2 children)

more often than not, it's in the name of security

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago

Think of the kids... security.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (3 children)
[–] [email protected] 11 points 9 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Surely this actually cuts into their profits in the longer term? More and more people will simply refuse to buy HP hardware. If they don't, they deserve to get grifted to high heavens and back at this point.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

If they actually bothered to care about the long term, a lot of these companies simply only care about near term and maybe maybe medium term profits

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago

What kind of "experts" are they? I don't know much about hacking but I call bullshit.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago (4 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago

"We bricked your printer to protect you."

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

You guys don't use the printers that allow you to pour liquid ink in the tanks?

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