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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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
Especially since they sell brand new printers for the price of about 3 ink cartridges.
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.
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.
I don’t know. They’ve been fucking up for a while now. At least back to the whole compaq mess.
Their industrial 3D printers (multi jet fusion) revolutionized the market
Makes perfect sense. Bill Gates puts Chinese 5G into third party printer ink. It's used to activate the spikes in vaccinations.
This makes me want to spread malware through HP printers
Careful or they'll hire you!
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.
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.
"They're hacking our profits!" - HP CEO
HP trying to pull a "Google" and say it's all for our own protection. :)
Username checks out
Oh. The ink is the issue. I see. My bad HP. I thought hackers hacked using software.
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
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!
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.
Anybody saying they "protect against viruses" in 2024 is selling something to boomers.
Those are ink printers so this track.
Oh (buy) Brother!
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.
"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)
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?
Wow, I really thought I broke the last printer I had at the office. Turns out it was HP. Too bad they replaced it with another HP.
