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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
"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.