Nice one for admins with HP printers

[Bird]

LOL!

Google is exposing thousands of Hewlett-Packard printers that aren't password protected, allowing anyone to control and manage them remotely and print reams of documents.
 
Many of the printers are at universities, including a number in Australia.
 

All it takes is one malicious script written by a clever hacker and you'll be replacing the paper tray every five minutes.

British blogger Adam Howard first highlighted the exposure in a post titled “Google has indexed thousands of publicly accessible printers” on his Port3000 blog.

Surprisingly, many of the printers aren't protected by a password, meaning anyone can upload a document to them via a web interface and print it remotely.
 
When accessed remotely without a password, the printers display an array of information such as how much ink or toner they have left in them, how many pages they have printed in their lifetime and how many paper jams they have had. They also display the names of documents printed to them, which could potentially contain personally identifiable information


Read more: The Article

the google search

[olddigger]

Yes, but what's the point? I live in Perth. If I access a printer in Cairns and print out reams of stuff, how do I collect it?

[Bird]

Yes, but what's the point? I live in Perth. If I access a printer in Cairns and print out reams of stuff, how do I collect it?

theres a few points.
You could send 12509348032948 print jobs or pages to printers just to be an arse, which would screw up the print server, and printer.. or some printers have hard drives in them that store data and info, you could access that
or you could change the firmware on the printer so that it prints everything to another printer anywhere in the world(EG: anything sensitive or not)

its more of an *you can be an arse if you like* thing.. but most companies would have printers behind a firewall.. Uni's and stuff need them pointing to the world so remote students can print stuff, but I'd have thought that would be useless too..

[ozbogwam]

Or print an address label to yourself and a polite note for them to send the printouts to you

[Bird]

Or print an address label to yourself and a polite note for them to send the printouts to you