A number of years back, I was trying to learn about network programming and SQL and decided to try and build a a kind of randomized port scanner that would gene

A number of years back, I was trying to learn about network programming and SQL and decided to try and build a a kind of randomized port scanner that would generate IP addresses randomly, then scan semi-random ports on those that were pingable, and finally store the results in a database. I quickly found a couple (not a lot, but I was kind of shocked to find any) of printers that were totally exposed to the Internet. While I can proudly say I even resisted the temptation to make them print out something clever like "Wer das liest, ist doof", I figured it was only a matter of time before somebody with less self-restraint would come along. At work, all our printers still respond to the default passwords one can so easily find on the Internet, but at least they are not reachable from the outside. Printers are not considered a security problem, because once someone is on our internal network, they could do much worse things. But still, exposing them to random people on the Internet is begging for something like this to happen.