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One afternoon I was doing some consulting work at one of HP's oldest offices. I needed to print something, so I had the printer produce a configuration page, so

One afternoon I was doing some consulting work at one of HP's oldest offices. I needed to print something, so I had the printer produce a configuration page, so I could get the IP address. Lo and behold, it was a public IP. As in, this old-ass printer, sitting at an HP office, was sitting on the Internet. And it was connected to the office network. Really blew my mind. The office was very old, and there were things laying around the hallways that seemed to have been untouched for 20 or even 40 years. So I'm guessing that workhorse of a printer had been chugging away for decades, and was configured long before anyone had thought about information security. Also, if this sounds too crazy to be possible, you can test this for yourself. If you do a Google search on the welcome page of an HP printer, you will find hundreds with public IP addresses.

justinclift 8y ago
> Lo and behold, it was a public IP. As lousy as that sounds from your description (eg a valid globally routable IP), it would be very surprising if the printer (or even the office space) was accessible from outside HP. Firewalls (and more) are a thing. ;) > Also, if this sounds too crazy to be possible, you can test this for yourself. If you do a Google search on the welcome page of an HP printer, you will find hundreds with public IP addresses. Yeah. Certainly says something about the competence of some places. :( Relatedly, it sounds like Shodan might be of interest: https://www.shodan.io https://www.shodan.io
viraptor 8y ago
> it was a public IP. IP exposed to the internet, or an IP from the public range? HP has 2 /8s. Lots of things got public IPs in there since they can hand them out like candy. It doesn't mean though that they're available from the internet.
- freehunter 8y ago
  Yeah, I've worked with plenty of companies who have a whole public range and use it internally, but the external firewall still stops them from being publicly routed. Simply having a public IP doesn't mean it's actually public.
- not_real_acct 8y ago
  The printer had a public IP and the printer was open to anyone who cared to use it. It was available from the Internet. The big question is whether you could exploit that to get to the rest of the facility. This particular facility was acquired by HP, so who knows how they set it up.

justinclift 8y ago

> Lo and behold, it was a public IP. As lousy as that sounds from your description (eg a valid globally routable IP), it would be very surprising if the printer (or even the office space) was accessible from outside HP. Firewalls (and more) are a thing. ;) > Also, if this sounds too crazy to be possible, you can test this for yourself. If you do a Google search on the welcome page of an HP printer, you will find hundreds with public IP addresses. Yeah. Certainly says something about the competence of some places. :( Relatedly, it sounds like Shodan might be of interest: https://www.shodan.io https://www.shodan.io

viraptor 8y ago

> it was a public IP. IP exposed to the internet, or an IP from the public range? HP has 2 /8s. Lots of things got public IPs in there since they can hand them out like candy. It doesn't mean though that they're available from the internet.

freehunter 8y ago
Yeah, I've worked with plenty of companies who have a whole public range and use it internally, but the external firewall still stops them from being publicly routed. Simply having a public IP doesn't mean it's actually public.
not_real_acct 8y ago
The printer had a public IP and the printer was open to anyone who cared to use it. It was available from the Internet. The big question is whether you could exploit that to get to the rest of the facility. This particular facility was acquired by HP, so who knows how they set it up.