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Besides all the obvious stuff, what also bugs me about this tactic is that it makes people weary of performing (or allowing automatic) firmware upgrades for pri
by breakingcups 6y ago
Besides all the obvious stuff, what also bugs me about this tactic is that it makes people weary of performing (or allowing automatic) firmware upgrades for printers, historically one of the least secure devices on a network.
- mattkevan 6y agoMy Epson has been bugging about a firmware update for ages. Not a chance I’m going to upgrade as it kicks up enough of a fuss about third-party ink as it is.
- paulgb 6y agoThe most infuriating thing about Epson inkjets is that they refuse to function if any color ink is low. I can't print black and white right now because I'm waiting on a yellow cartridge to arrive. Most bizarre is that I never actually print color, except for running calibration, so I don't know where all the ink went.
- lukevp 6y agoThe yellow ink is used to print a faint serial number on every page, meant to track back to you if you use the printer to counterfeit money. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_Identification_Code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_Identification_Code
- ta988 6y agoOh there is that too... That would be interesting to have an estimationn of how much that makes.
- morpheuskafka 6y ago> meant to track back to you if you use the printer to counterfeit money... Lol, because a $100 printer from Amazon can just pop out sheets of cash, even though they don't have any color shifting ink, no way to do the lithograph printing. I think these were developed before authorities realized how much power online (dis)information would have--it was all about trying to lock down speech and publication freedom, turning household printers into government minders.
- ruined 6y agoit's also used to prove exfiltration of documents and catch leakers. reality winner was captured this way https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_Winner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_Winner
- morpheuskafka 6y agoI was going to mention that although I didn't remember if it was conclusively proven to be that. I think the bigger issue is that she printed it on an agency printer so they were easily able to get the list of everyone who had printed it (not many) and work from there. Certainly, the NSA could put firmware on its own printers (as could any organization that needed it) so that is no justification for putting it in all printers with no notice to the user.
- krupan 6y agoYellow is also printed underneath black to make the black blacker
- ta988 6y agoEvery time you turn an inkjet printer on and regularly if it stays on, it will squirt some ink on a sort of pad or in a padded reservoir. This is to avoid the cartridge to clog (and maybe also forcing people to buy new ink, but it is probably hard to prove what is the right amount for just unclogging).
- londons_explore 6y agoAnd if you have your inkjet too long, that reservoir will overflow and leave sticky ink sludge all over your desk and floor... If you wipe it up with a cloth, that cloth will be forever black. If you use hands to do it, your hands will be black for months.
- klyrs 6y agoSome inkjet printers have an extremely scuzzy behavior where they use all the colors to make "black" -- not because it's what you want, but to sell more ink
- rasz 6y agoyellow dots https://www.eff.org/issues/printers https://www.eff.org/issues/printers
- Dagger2 6y agoThat really sounds like you should be buying a new printer, not new cartridges for this printer. (I'm going to mirror the suggestions from everywhere else in this thread and tell you to get a laser, especially since you don't ever print color.)
- imglorp 6y agoWhat happens if you give them local WIFI but block them from reaching outbound?
- breakingcups 6y agoThey can still be used by malware to gain persistence on a network, or to escalate their privileges.