One of the joys of modern day printers is that they can print wirelessly. This means that regardless of what device you’re using, you will be able to send documents and images to the printer without having to deal with cables and all that jazz. Unfortunately hooking a printer up to the network also means that opening ourselves up to potential hacks.
This is what happened by a person calling themselves TheHackerGiraffe who in a report from The Verge, has been hacking printers around the world and printing out messages asking them to subscribe to YouTuber PewDiePie’s channel. Now you might think that this could be PewDiePie’s way of generating publicity, although given that hacking is illegal, it seems unlikely. Instead it seems that this is TheHackerGiraffe’s way of raising awareness of printer security.
The hack apparently took advantage of an open network port that can be found on hundreds of thousands of printers around the world. This is said to be a known vulnerability and the fact that it was just taken advantage of shows that printer companies definitely need to find a way to close this hole.
@pewdiepie I work in IT around Brighton and our Printers are being hacked….is this your propaganda? pic.twitter.com/xIRCGEQoNB
— Georgia Barton (@georgia_bizzle) November 29, 2018
Speaking to The Verge, TheHackerGiraffe said, “People underestimate how easy a malicious hacker could have used a vulnerability like this to cause major havoc. Hackers could have stolen files, installed malware, caused physical damage to the printers and even use the printer as a foothold into the inner network. The most horrifying part is: I never considered hacking printers before, the whole learning, downloading and scripting process took no more than 30 minutes.”