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?
deleted by creator
When will you start burning things? What - specifically - would it take?
I think that basically would be the same answer as your question.
Edit:. Sorry, looks like you probably had this conversation already. Half of the comments look deleted on my end .
Honestly I already admitted it somewhere else. This is just me being chicken shit to fight the first match. But it will take is me being able to blend into a mob that’s already someplace.
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
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.
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…
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
“They’re hacking our profits!” - HP CEO
This makes me want to spread malware through HP printers
Careful or they’ll hire you!
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.
Makes perfect sense. Bill Gates puts Chinese 5G into third party printer ink. It’s used to activate the spikes in vaccinations.
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.
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.
Oh (buy) Brother!
HACK THE
PLANETPRINTER INK CARTRIDGES!Username checks out
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.