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submitted 1 year ago by L4s@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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.

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[-] RememberTheApollo@lemmy.world 70 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] EdibleFriend@lemmy.world 21 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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?

[-] TotalFat@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago

HP is responsible for PC LOAD LETTER.

Never forget..

[-] EdibleFriend@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

THOSE MOTHERFUCKERS

[-] MondayToFriday@lemmy.ca 6 points 1 year ago

What are you complaining about? Those were the glory days of HP.

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[-] ironhydroxide@sh.itjust.works 38 points 1 year ago

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........

[-] AA5B@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

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

[-] turbowafflz@lemmy.world 22 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] jaybone@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

I don’t know. They’ve been fucking up for a while now. At least back to the whole compaq mess.

[-] HootinNHollerin@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Their industrial 3D printers (multi jet fusion) revolutionized the market

[-] magnus@lemmy.ahall.se 19 points 1 year ago

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!

[-] ilinamorato@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

No but see then you could get hacked through...uh...nanobots in the ink! Yeah. Real problem, totally possible, definitely happens.

[-] Routhinator@startrek.website 19 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] sounddrill@linux.community 7 points 1 year ago

Why does the ink cartridge need to be so smart that it has CVEs?

[-] N0body@sh.itjust.works 18 points 1 year ago

Makes perfect sense. Bill Gates puts Chinese 5G into third party printer ink. It's used to activate the spikes in vaccinations.

[-] HowManyNimons@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

What gives Space Lasers their bright pure red color?

[-] extant@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] TurtleJoe@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

And the stuff they put in chemtrails are the original RNA packets that will change your DNA. The covid vaccine is what activates them.

(But seriously, pretty much every covid vaccine conspiracy is just the chemtrail conspiracy repackaged.)

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[-] yol@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] valen@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] ICastFist@programming.dev 12 points 1 year ago

"They're hacking our profits!" - HP CEO

[-] ZeroCool@slrpnk.net 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

HACK THE ~~PLANET~~ PRINTER INK CARTRIDGES!

[-] ElPussyKangaroo@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago

Oh. The ink is the issue. I see. My bad HP. I thought hackers hacked using software.

[-] INeedMana@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

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

[-] grue@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

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!

[-] wikibot@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

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.

^to^ ^opt^ ^out^^,^ ^pm^ ^me^ ^'optout'.^ ^article^ ^|^ ^about^

[-] eager_eagle@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

more often than not, it's in the name of security

[-] Hotdogman@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago

Think of the kids... security.

[-] henfredemars@infosec.pub 3 points 1 year ago
[-] medicsofanarchy@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago
[-] Kyrgizion@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Surely this actually cuts into their profits in the longer term? More and more people will simply refuse to buy HP hardware. If they don't, they deserve to get grifted to high heavens and back at this point.

[-] cm0002@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

If they actually bothered to care about the long term, a lot of these companies simply only care about near term and maybe maybe medium term profits

[-] eager_eagle@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

the poor defenseless users, of course 🙏

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[-] ManosTheHandsOfFate@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

Oh (buy) Brother!

[-] wildcardology@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

What kind of "experts" are they? I don't know much about hacking but I call bullshit.

[-] AceFuzzLord@lemm.ee 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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.

[-] max@feddit.nl 7 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] ikidd@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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.

[-] Empricorn@feddit.nl 3 points 1 year ago

Anybody saying they "protect against viruses" in 2024 is selling something to boomers.

[-] Grass@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 year ago

Some YouTuber said the only evidence if this was an hp document of their internal testing. So instead of fixing the security hole they monetize it.

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[-] Suavevillain@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

"We bricked your printer to protect you."

[-] gedaliyah@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Wow, I really thought I broke the last printer I had at the office. Turns out it was HP. Too bad they replaced it with another HP.

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this post was submitted on 25 Jan 2024
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