HP CEO: Blocking third-party ink from printers fights viruses
arstechnica.com
His claims are quickly debunked in the article, as the true reason is, obviously, protecting their IP and subscription model
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His claims are quickly debunked in the article, as the true reason is, obviously, protecting their IP and subscription model
It wasn't quite that; there was a buffer overflow in the code that was talking to the ink cartridge. So a malicious ink cartridge could in fact take over your printer. Of course, a web page you visit could in fact take over your browser and that's a much more realistic threat vector, and somehow we've survived all this time without limiting ourselves to HP-sponsored and security-assured web pages with a healthy cut of profit going to HP from every visit.
So the flaw is in the printer or driver, and HP has just admitted to shipping an insecure, nay negligently dangerous, product to consumers?
In the 90s, they shipped recovery CDs with viruses baked in. Knowingly shipping destructive code and hardware is kinda HP's thing.
I've not heard about this. Does anyone have a link to share? Can't find one myself
This was 95ish. We were under strict orders not to confirm it. HP worked hard to keep it under wraps. Now layer on the fact the web was still in its infancy, you likely won't find a whole lot about it.
well that makes a bit more sense, thanks for clearing it up. Still stupid, but not as bad as I had been lead to believe.