Our Printer Got Hacked?!?!: "Our Printer Got Hacked?!?!
By Larry Seltzer
January 25, 2007
Opinion: Yes, hackers can enter unprotected ports and exploit buffer overflows in printers. Things never stop getting more outrageous with computer security, do they?
It's one of those 'not really a big deal yet but could blow up soon' problems: Printers, especially higher-end multifunction business printers, have become so intelligent and complicated that they have serious security risks. They are, in fact, really desktop computers, even workstations in disguise.
They run a wide range of operating systems customized and hardened to varying degrees. Linux, Windows XP Embedded, NetBSD, VxWorks, even AIX in one old IBM printer model. These operating systems may have vulnerabilities on their own, and who knows what flaws are in the applications that do the actual printing, scanning, managing the control panel, and so on."
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