7 ms·

I never let my printer near the Internet. It goes on the "fucking trash" subnet which has no route out. Mine's an HP but it complains occasionally that it can't

by ohgr 2y ago

I never let my printer near the Internet. It goes on the "fucking trash" subnet which has no route out. Mine's an HP but it complains occasionally that it can't get new firmware which makes me feel warm inside.

aqueueaqueue 2y ago
Eventually we get to the point we let nothing near the internet!
- lukan 2y ago
  Good luck with soldered on LTE modems.
  - notpushkin 2y ago
    Cool, a printer and a free unlimited SIM card!
    - hhjj 2y ago
      Until they use eSIM, and then we will have to tinfoil all of our electronics.
      - hkt 2y ago
        Or, cheaper electronics emerge that don't include any independent rogue networking capability!
        FredPret 2y ago
        Hardware that is not subsidized by spying on the consumer will be more expensive
        account42 2y ago
        All evidence points to the spying profits to not be returned to the user via lower prices.
        notpushkin 2y ago
        Yeah, when everybody is spying why compete on the price?
        gessha 2y ago
        > cheaper electronics > don't include any independent rogue networking capability Everybody and their broligarch mom wants to make these two qualities incompatible.
- HenryBemis 2y ago
  And why should we? It should all be "allow" and not "block". Machine should be serving _us_ the buyers/users. I could never understand why my Windows Explorer (back in the ZoneAlarm days) were speaking to Microsoft when I was searching for my FileName.doc inside my C: Drive. I could understand the Word or Excel accessing when I need "Help" (I assume online help file was more frequently updated). No! Naughty developers and naughty businesses. My machines should leave my 127.0.01 when I want for MY uses and MY needs and MY convenience. For vast majority of home users the only app that needs to 'get out' is their browser and their "windows udpate". Everything else is just tracking.
  - thih9 2y ago
    > Machine should be serving _us_ the buyers/users. Yes. But every now and then consumers get a tempting offer and trade a bit of their freedom for lower price, more comfort, more prestige, or something else. I.e. in practice buyers don’t mind that much and likely also don’t understand the difference and the consequences that well.
    - dietr1ch 2y ago
      Consumers don't get told prices are down because of privacy going away. Prices going down on technology is the norm, so it's not even suspicious.
    - toofy 2y ago
      > … and likely also don’t understand the difference and the consequences that well. this could be a very good argument to explain why so many have become skeptical of companies. we have example after example where companies take advantage of people. hearing my grandfathers generation go on about “the days when you could trust a company to be fair” i used to think they were seeing with rose-tinted glasses, but more and more im convinced we’re dealing something much more nefarious than that generation.
      - FredPret 2y ago
        Companies used to hire Pinkerton detectives to put down strikes and make employees use company stores. Behaviour has improved for various reasons. All we’re seeing now is that people’s technological surface area is expanding from zero to infinity so there are lots of new little cracks and edge cases society still has to sort out.
- zecg 2y ago
  I have doubled my battery life on Moto Edge with Rethink DNS, blocking everything per app. There's so much junk I don't want to phone home that tries 50 times a day.
  - aqueueaqueue 2y ago
    This sort of solution appeals to me but I wonder what the trade-off is. I am now sending data about domains I visit and when to a different entity not my ISP, how do I trust them more?
    - zecg 2y ago
      You don't have to use any DNS features, Rethink will happily let you set your DNS resolvers to whatever you like, you can just use it as an on-device VPN that allows you to block or isolate everything per app or per connection.
DoingIsLearning 2y ago
My reply is low value for HN but your comment is the literal embodiment of an older meme: - Tech Enthusiasts: Everything in my house is wired to the Internet of Things! I control it all from my smartphone! My smart-house is bluetooth enabled and I can give it voice commands via Alexa! I love the future! - Programmers / Engineers: The most recent piece of technology I own is a printer from 2004 and I keep a loaded gun ready to shoot it if it ever makes an unexpected noise. P.S. More seriously I agree, we witnessed multiple times over the enshitification that inevitably follows.
- throw_pm23 2y ago
  I think the midwit meme captures this best, where at both ends of the IQ bell curve the characters say "I hate technology", and the guy in the middle loves it.
- LinuxBender 2y ago
  You jest but my first experience with this were Compuserve CD's in the 90's. I saw my hard drive light blinking when I did not ask the computer to do anything so I killed the power then powered on, ejected the CD and threw it into the trash. Ever since that experience I've been highly skeptical of any program and vindicated hundreds of times since.
  - sellmesoap 2y ago
    I was just thinking how I miss the sound of spinning rust as a system health indicator.
  - ndsipa_pomu 2y ago
    Surely that's just the result of Windows blindly trusting and running any insertable media? That was such a stupid design choice by Microsoft
    - LinuxBender 2y ago
      That was a result of launching their program think early web client app to talk to their network. I did not install anything yet it started enumerating the hard drive. I had a LED for the CD and a LED for the hard drive. This was a 386-DX40 (40Mhz) with a 144MB RLL hard drive. There was enough flickering to indicate they were reading a lot of data.
dtgriscom 2y ago
Ah, the joys of thwarting a piece of hardware.
mschuster91 2y ago
I dont see this that positive. As long as your computer has access to it, malware can exploit vulnerabilities in the firmware to achieve persistence.
a-french-anon 2y ago
I went even more radical, personally: got a DCP-L2510D that simply doesn't have WiFi/Ethernet, only USB. Both scanning and printing work perfectly via CUPS and I'm happy as one can be.
abcd_f 2y ago
Same. I just don't set the default gateway when configuring it.
throwawayqqq11 2y ago
Maybe i can help against that warmth ;) Could some rogue javascript establish a connection from your browser to your printer?
- rkagerer 2y ago
  Rouge as in red, or as in rogue?
  - robertlagrant 2y ago
    You need to do some rouge teaming to explore this vulnerability.
  - throwawayqqq11 2y ago
    Fixed the typo. Even though its not as far fetched, i am not talking about cosmetic JS :)
- ohgr 2y ago
  Oh don't :) I'm actually worried that some newer smart devices might be set up to use well known public wifi services that are available from consumer routers. Just sitting here I have public "EE Wifi X" and "BT Internet" which it could connect to if configured at the factory to do that. Then I am boned.
  - macNchz 2y ago
    Check out Amazon Sidewalk—if any of your neighbors connect a device supporting it to the internet, your devices will find them and use their internet connection if you don’t provide one! Apparently their network covers like 90% of the US population (at a low data rate), and they’ve made it possible for non-Amazon devices to implement it.
    - ohgr 2y ago
      Ok so my next house: must have Faraday cage.
Brian_K_White 2y ago
Still have to be careful, they have another method where an update is delivered as a print job (that doesn't print anything). So also don't let any windows or mac (or android or ios or chromebook I guess) clients reach the printer by any means, even usb, with drivers you aren't 100% sure about.
- account42 2y ago
  Android and iOS don't support printer drivers so should be safe, no?
  - Brian_K_White 2y ago
    idk about ios but I sure can print from android. I don't know if I'd be surprised or not to find out that you actually can't print from ios. It seems crazy to me, especially considering ipads, but the entire Apple ecosystem seems crazy to me and yet it exists despite my incredulity. I could even print from webos and palm but I guess that doesn't matter now. 50/50 toss up if the current webos on lg tvs still has any printer drivers. But if there was still any webos printer drivers, they will not be open source and so you can not trust them not to do unwanted things to your printer some day.
    - account42 2y ago
      Being able to print doesn't mean you have drivers for your printer - both the phone and printer support a semi-standardized protocol (probably bastardized postscript).
      - Brian_K_White 2y ago
        That's a driver. It's also a connection. If the blob is delivered in a ps package over https, or bluetooth, or via lpr or jetdirect makes no difference. The point is that software you don't control generated the data and delivered it to the printer.
        2y ago

by ohgr 2y ago

aqueueaqueue 2y ago

Eventually we get to the point we let nothing near the internet!

lukan 2y ago
Good luck with soldered on LTE modems.
- notpushkin 2y ago
  Cool, a printer and a free unlimited SIM card!
  - hhjj 2y ago
    Until they use eSIM, and then we will have to tinfoil all of our electronics.
    - hkt 2y ago
      Or, cheaper electronics emerge that don't include any independent rogue networking capability!
      - FredPret 2y ago
        Hardware that is not subsidized by spying on the consumer will be more expensive
        account42 2y ago
        All evidence points to the spying profits to not be returned to the user via lower prices.
        notpushkin 2y ago
        Yeah, when everybody is spying why compete on the price?
      - gessha 2y ago
        > cheaper electronics > don't include any independent rogue networking capability Everybody and their broligarch mom wants to make these two qualities incompatible.
HenryBemis 2y ago
And why should we? It should all be "allow" and not "block". Machine should be serving _us_ the buyers/users. I could never understand why my Windows Explorer (back in the ZoneAlarm days) were speaking to Microsoft when I was searching for my FileName.doc inside my C: Drive. I could understand the Word or Excel accessing when I need "Help" (I assume online help file was more frequently updated). No! Naughty developers and naughty businesses. My machines should leave my 127.0.01 when I want for MY uses and MY needs and MY convenience. For vast majority of home users the only app that needs to 'get out' is their browser and their "windows udpate". Everything else is just tracking.
- thih9 2y ago
  > Machine should be serving _us_ the buyers/users. Yes. But every now and then consumers get a tempting offer and trade a bit of their freedom for lower price, more comfort, more prestige, or something else. I.e. in practice buyers don’t mind that much and likely also don’t understand the difference and the consequences that well.
  - dietr1ch 2y ago
    Consumers don't get told prices are down because of privacy going away. Prices going down on technology is the norm, so it's not even suspicious.
  - toofy 2y ago
    > … and likely also don’t understand the difference and the consequences that well. this could be a very good argument to explain why so many have become skeptical of companies. we have example after example where companies take advantage of people. hearing my grandfathers generation go on about “the days when you could trust a company to be fair” i used to think they were seeing with rose-tinted glasses, but more and more im convinced we’re dealing something much more nefarious than that generation.
    - FredPret 2y ago
      Companies used to hire Pinkerton detectives to put down strikes and make employees use company stores. Behaviour has improved for various reasons. All we’re seeing now is that people’s technological surface area is expanding from zero to infinity so there are lots of new little cracks and edge cases society still has to sort out.
zecg 2y ago
I have doubled my battery life on Moto Edge with Rethink DNS, blocking everything per app. There's so much junk I don't want to phone home that tries 50 times a day.
- aqueueaqueue 2y ago
  This sort of solution appeals to me but I wonder what the trade-off is. I am now sending data about domains I visit and when to a different entity not my ISP, how do I trust them more?
  - zecg 2y ago
    You don't have to use any DNS features, Rethink will happily let you set your DNS resolvers to whatever you like, you can just use it as an on-device VPN that allows you to block or isolate everything per app or per connection.

DoingIsLearning 2y ago

My reply is low value for HN but your comment is the literal embodiment of an older meme: - Tech Enthusiasts: Everything in my house is wired to the Internet of Things! I control it all from my smartphone! My smart-house is bluetooth enabled and I can give it voice commands via Alexa! I love the future! - Programmers / Engineers: The most recent piece of technology I own is a printer from 2004 and I keep a loaded gun ready to shoot it if it ever makes an unexpected noise. P.S. More seriously I agree, we witnessed multiple times over the enshitification that inevitably follows.

throw_pm23 2y ago
I think the midwit meme captures this best, where at both ends of the IQ bell curve the characters say "I hate technology", and the guy in the middle loves it.
LinuxBender 2y ago
You jest but my first experience with this were Compuserve CD's in the 90's. I saw my hard drive light blinking when I did not ask the computer to do anything so I killed the power then powered on, ejected the CD and threw it into the trash. Ever since that experience I've been highly skeptical of any program and vindicated hundreds of times since.
- sellmesoap 2y ago
  I was just thinking how I miss the sound of spinning rust as a system health indicator.
- ndsipa_pomu 2y ago
  Surely that's just the result of Windows blindly trusting and running any insertable media? That was such a stupid design choice by Microsoft
  - LinuxBender 2y ago
    That was a result of launching their program think early web client app to talk to their network. I did not install anything yet it started enumerating the hard drive. I had a LED for the CD and a LED for the hard drive. This was a 386-DX40 (40Mhz) with a 144MB RLL hard drive. There was enough flickering to indicate they were reading a lot of data.

dtgriscom 2y ago

Ah, the joys of thwarting a piece of hardware.

mschuster91 2y ago

I dont see this that positive. As long as your computer has access to it, malware can exploit vulnerabilities in the firmware to achieve persistence.

a-french-anon 2y ago

I went even more radical, personally: got a DCP-L2510D that simply doesn't have WiFi/Ethernet, only USB. Both scanning and printing work perfectly via CUPS and I'm happy as one can be.

abcd_f 2y ago

Same. I just don't set the default gateway when configuring it.

throwawayqqq11 2y ago

Maybe i can help against that warmth ;) Could some rogue javascript establish a connection from your browser to your printer?

rkagerer 2y ago
Rouge as in red, or as in rogue?
- robertlagrant 2y ago
  You need to do some rouge teaming to explore this vulnerability.
- throwawayqqq11 2y ago
  Fixed the typo. Even though its not as far fetched, i am not talking about cosmetic JS :)
ohgr 2y ago
Oh don't :) I'm actually worried that some newer smart devices might be set up to use well known public wifi services that are available from consumer routers. Just sitting here I have public "EE Wifi X" and "BT Internet" which it could connect to if configured at the factory to do that. Then I am boned.
- macNchz 2y ago
  Check out Amazon Sidewalk—if any of your neighbors connect a device supporting it to the internet, your devices will find them and use their internet connection if you don’t provide one! Apparently their network covers like 90% of the US population (at a low data rate), and they’ve made it possible for non-Amazon devices to implement it.
  - ohgr 2y ago
    Ok so my next house: must have Faraday cage.

Brian_K_White 2y ago

Still have to be careful, they have another method where an update is delivered as a print job (that doesn't print anything). So also don't let any windows or mac (or android or ios or chromebook I guess) clients reach the printer by any means, even usb, with drivers you aren't 100% sure about.

account42 2y ago
Android and iOS don't support printer drivers so should be safe, no?
- Brian_K_White 2y ago
  idk about ios but I sure can print from android. I don't know if I'd be surprised or not to find out that you actually can't print from ios. It seems crazy to me, especially considering ipads, but the entire Apple ecosystem seems crazy to me and yet it exists despite my incredulity. I could even print from webos and palm but I guess that doesn't matter now. 50/50 toss up if the current webos on lg tvs still has any printer drivers. But if there was still any webos printer drivers, they will not be open source and so you can not trust them not to do unwanted things to your printer some day.
  - account42 2y ago
    Being able to print doesn't mean you have drivers for your printer - both the phone and printer support a semi-standardized protocol (probably bastardized postscript).
    - Brian_K_White 2y ago
      That's a driver. It's also a connection. If the blob is delivered in a ps package over https, or bluetooth, or via lpr or jetdirect makes no difference. The point is that software you don't control generated the data and delivered it to the printer.
      - 2y ago