Nearly 28,000 printers 'hacked' over the internet: What to do

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Nearly 28,000 printers 'hacked' over the net: What to practice

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The security-news website Cybernews announced today that it had "hacked" nearly 28,000 printers worldwide in a stunt to "enhance awareness of printer-security issues."

That's a worthy crusade, as many owners and administrators of networked printers don't properly secure them. But Cybernews' "hack" wasn't a hack at all, really. Instead, Cybernews used common printing commands to print documents on remote printers, exactly every bit the printers had been designed to do.

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This was possible considering these networked printers were set up to receive print jobs over the internet without any authorisation. So Cybernews commanded the printers to print out a five-page document instructing the printers' owners and operators on the nuts of printer security.

If this sounds familiar, it's considering this has been done before. In 2016, the notorious cyberspace troll Andrew Auernheimer, aka "Weev," used similar methods to get 20,000 printers (his number) to spit out a one-page racist manifesto, consummate with giant swastikas.

In 2017, a pseudonymous hacker called "Stackoverflowin" did the aforementioned thing, only sending a brief message to shut open net ports instead of a racist screed.

Like Cybernews and Stackoverflowin, Auernheimer scanned the internet for printers that were open up to the internet and would receive remote commands. Nevertheless, he told Vice Motherboard that he "did not hack any printers," just instead "sent them messages, because they were configured to receive letters from the public."

Now despite the warnings in Cybernews' blog post, just because your printer tin can receive impress jobs over the internet doesn't hateful it can be completely hacked. But exposing your printer to the internet does make that easier.

To make certain your printer isn't attainable online, tweak the firewall settings on your home (or role) router to cake port 9100, the most usually used port of cyberspace printing. If you can find a like setting in your printer'south administrative interface, block the port there also.

Cybernews adds two more tips to protect your printer from miscreants, whether information technology's connected to the net or not.

First, make sure your printer'southward firmware is up to date. You may take to poke effectually on the manufacturer'southward website to find new updates. Second, encounter if you can change the default authoritative password for the router.

Paul Wagenseil is a senior editor at Tom's Guide focused on security and privacy. He has besides been a dishwasher, fry melt, long-haul driver, code monkey and video editor. He'due south been rooting around in the information-security space for more xv years at FoxNews.com, SecurityNewsDaily, TechNewsDaily and Tom'due south Guide, has presented talks at the ShmooCon, DerbyCon and BSides Las Vegas hacker conferences, shown upwards in random TV news spots and even moderated a panel discussion at the CEDIA home-technology conference. You can follow his rants on Twitter at @snd_wagenseil.

Source: https://www.tomsguide.com/news/hacked-printers-rogue-job

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