For many of us hacking of printers seems to be next to impossible thing. But, a hacker has hacked more than 150,000 printers via the internet.
The attack affected all kinds of printers- from home devices to shop receipt printers. The printers were hijacked and were instructed to churn out pages and print out strange messages.
The printers which were connected to the internet displayed this message on the computer screens: "Hacked. Stackoverflowin/stack the almighty, hacker god has returned to his throne, as the greatest memegod. Your printer is part of a flaming botnet. Your printer has been pwn'd."
A hacker who uses the pseudonym name Stackoverflowin, didn't have any bad intentions, as he urges the users to have better security for their printers.
He ran an automated program that scoured the internet for printers that did not have basic security controls switched on.
"It was kind of on impulse," Stack told The Register. "I had been looking into printers for a while prior to this, about a few months before. I saw multiple articles about printers and it invoked my curiosity again, and yeah, it went from there."
"I used zmap to get the IPs with the targeted ports then a small 'loader' that I coded in C to actually do the print job and send the packet," Stack told The Register. "With most of these printers you can push your own firmware to them – the firmware doesn't need to be signed."
Just before this attack, a German academic study had found vulnerabilities in a wide range of printers.
The attack affected all kinds of printers- from home devices to shop receipt printers. The printers were hijacked and were instructed to churn out pages and print out strange messages.
The printers which were connected to the internet displayed this message on the computer screens: "Hacked. Stackoverflowin/stack the almighty, hacker god has returned to his throne, as the greatest memegod. Your printer is part of a flaming botnet. Your printer has been pwn'd."
A hacker who uses the pseudonym name Stackoverflowin, didn't have any bad intentions, as he urges the users to have better security for their printers.
He ran an automated program that scoured the internet for printers that did not have basic security controls switched on.
"It was kind of on impulse," Stack told The Register. "I had been looking into printers for a while prior to this, about a few months before. I saw multiple articles about printers and it invoked my curiosity again, and yeah, it went from there."
"I used zmap to get the IPs with the targeted ports then a small 'loader' that I coded in C to actually do the print job and send the packet," Stack told The Register. "With most of these printers you can push your own firmware to them – the firmware doesn't need to be signed."
Just before this attack, a German academic study had found vulnerabilities in a wide range of printers.