Google has indexed thousands of publicly accessible HP printers

http://port3000.co.uk/google-has-indexed-thousands-of-publicly-acce

by skattyadz • 13 years ago

241 141 13 years ago

port3000.co.uk

penguat• 13 years ago

So, next question is how much malware is hanging around for those printers? Are all / mostly / some / none compromised?

jhdevos• 13 years ago

Should we now all print documents to those printers with warnings saying that they are publicly accessible?

codesuela• 13 years ago

Either that or freak people out by printing messages from ghosts stuck in their printer.

dspillett• 13 years ago

I'm assuming that it is just the setup/status/diagnostics control panel so you'll not be able to print anything arbitrary (shame, it could be a fun game!). If you are of a mind to wind someone up you might be able to kick out a pile of test pages and reconfigure the thing so it is no use until someone does a factory reset.

A similar but worse case was some years ago when a range of consumer router+firewall boxes had a fault which made them present their control interface on the WAN interface and had no password set by default. A large number of those somehow got into a search index (it may have also been Google, I can't rightly remember), and from there you can probably do more harm than you can from a printer.

Permit• 13 years ago

I've looked at two and both had the option to print a file that you uploaded. Of course I didn't actually try to print anything, but it looks like you probably could.

draxofavalon• 13 years ago

I already tried and printed PDF file, it works.

SoftwareMaven• 13 years ago

And risk five years in prison for unauthorized access of a computer? I think not.

pbhjpbhj9• 13 years ago

Why do you think it is unauthorised?

The other question, which would be fascinating to see raised in court I feel, is whether a printer is a "computer" within the terms of the law (CFAA, CMA(UK) or whatever).

You'd probably be able to question the meaning of access too - for example if you find an IP on Google and simply send data to port 9100 that's not really access, accessing a computer is 2 ways. If the law judged spamming port 91 as "access" then sending faxes or texting someone would come under the such legal acts .. that can't be within the intent of the law surely.

If other laws are used - "you sent them a message they didn't want" - then that's the end of [legal] unsolicited mail [yay!].

mrj2• 13 years ago

Worse than printing somewhere remote, many of those are probably also scanners. If the original is left on the glass (I forget it all the time), an attacker could scan it remotely.

ihsw• 13 years ago

That's a very bad idea, you should call your lawyer/a law firm to prepare for the impending deluge of threatening letters and lawsuits filed against you.

mrj2• 13 years ago

I only pointed out that there is more danger for people with publicly available printers than just getting random junk printed.

You are jumping to conclusions.

kenbellows2• 13 years ago

Some scanners (and printers, for that matter) store cached copies of recently scanned/printed items. Probably you could grab those if you knew what you were doing.

VMG• 13 years ago

So is the secret service going to knock on my door if I click a link? I can't tell anymore.

KMag2• 13 years ago

The secret service is going to knock for some reason or another anyway, so stop living in fear and live your life.

aw3c2• 13 years ago

Direct link on Google.com: https://www.google.com/search?q=inurl%3Ahp%2Fdevice%2Fthis.L...

joering24• 13 years ago

Idea for startup.

1. write a script to scrap google links to HP admin panel

2. filter out the IPs that are from US (given you want to work on US market)

3. assemble the list of printer types and current toner levels.

4. write a script that will print to each of those printers a one single page, stating your company "Cheapo Suppliers Inc" was notified that "your printer is low on toner. Call xxxxxx to re-fill. Lowest prices quaranteed within one day delivery!". You can add link to your shop page that already redirects user to specific type of printer they have, some type of one-click order (based on which toners are low).

5. daily rinse repeat.

6. sell your business to HP (at least try to).

rorrr• 13 years ago

That's probably illegal not only in the US.

fishbacon• 13 years ago

Better yet, print a QR code, they can just scan it with their iPhone.

kenbellows2• 13 years ago

What a great way to distribute malware. Host it on a server somewhere, encode the URL in a QR code, and print just the code, blown up large, with no descriptors to printers everywhere. People will be so intrigued they'll just scan it. Aaaaaaaaand infected.

halviti• 13 years ago

In the US, this will get you arrested, you will have a huge fine and probation, and prison time is not off the table.

I'll refer you to the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, which does not just govern unsolicited e-mail, but all commercial mail which the law defines as electronic communication (bulk faxes, etc.)

joering24• 13 years ago

Lets not overreact here.

The printers are on public wire.

You had not done any crime by using Google to find them.

You obtained access to their open HP admin panel via public link with no password or credentials you had to pass.

You haven't stole any information and, furthermore, there is NO confidential information even to be stolen to start with.

On the top of that, you cannot even determine who they are (name, company, address, email, nothing?). They are totally undefinable sitting by a raw IP address. Sure you know someone is using HP printer. Can you get legally punished for that?

I don't think that taking advantage of a publicly accessible information is punishable by jail, especially since noone got hurt and no information were stolen, whether it is information someone made their living off of (Aaron case), or just totally worthless information as of what brand computer of printer is being used. It would be hard for a company to sue you -- (lack of merit)?

If Google got away with snooping private data from open Wifs (and I am sure they made some sort of use from all that gathered data, even if only internally), then I am pretty sure you wont get any heat for such a petite stretch of snooping people's printers.

another though: you may say that someone can sue you for printing a page using their material and toner, but thats too little of damage to even start with. However, arguendo, if you would get slammed with class action lawsuit, you are most likely a millionaire from your idea anyways :)

samstave4• 13 years ago

Nostalgia Scam Time:

Back in the late 90s there was a common scam run against big-ish offices.

A caller would call asking to talk to the person in charge of printers, typically either IT or Facilities.

Once connected they would say that they are sending out the recipients free gift, which was some lame piece of electronics - often a small television. They would get the work address and confirmation to ship the free gift. They would claim that along with the free gift - they would send a sample toner cartridge that had "super fine toner in it, certified by HP to last 3 times as long as other toner cartridges"

Then, along with the free gift, a PALLET of toner cartridges would be sent - along with an invoice for some ridiculous amount.

When I got my first call about these "super fine toner cartridges" - I got suspicious and contacted HP. They told me about the scam - but that it was hard to find the people. They asked me to get as much info as I could from them if they called again. I got a call again, got as much info as I could without accepting the offer for the free gift - but they wound up sending it to me, along with the pallet of cartridges as well.

HP came to my office and picked it all up after contacting them again.

Over the years - I received more of these calls - and as soon as they brought up toner and free gifts, I tol them I knew the scam they were running - and they would promptly hang up on me...

raverbashing• 13 years ago

There's some law against postal fraud that says whatever they send you though the post is yours (to avoid exactly this kind of scam)

You can try not paying the invoice and see what happens.

eli2• 13 years ago

I've had not just people calling, but a door-to-door toner salesperson visit as recently as last year.

X-Istence5• 13 years ago

No nostalgia required ... they still call, even the small business I work for gets at least one or two calls for toner cartridges and we work for your printing company a month.

doktrin• 13 years ago

I'm a little unclear as to how how exactly they planned to enforce payment for un-solicited toner. What am I missing?

bintery• 13 years ago

That's really nothing compared to searching for Canon ImageRunner admin pages (google lets you search for a URL by content/markers/text in the page info/name) - over on those imagerunner tech forums, people were able to bring up previous scans going back however far, and in minutes be looking at passports, medical records, college information, etc...

Maybe more disturbing is that as these things are decommissioned they are just 'junked'. Meaning sent over seas as is to be 'disposed' - anything ever copied, scanned, or sent on that thing is in there somewhere and some foreign nation is in control of MFDs that were in hospitals, law firms, architect/contractor office, police stations, and on and on and on.

The holes have been largely fixed through encryption and other techniques but only very recently - which I've been able to work around myself with forensic tools. I won't provide the link here, but if you google around you can find discussion on this topic pretty easily.

glhaynes• 13 years ago

anything ever copied, scanned, or sent on that thing is in there somewhere

I wouldn't be terribly surprised to find out my MFD has more persisted and recoverable in it than my first guess of how much it has (nothing), but it certainly doesn't have every page that's ever gone in or out of it.

cs7022• 13 years ago

I've written about this before.[1] Many network-connected printers simply assume that the local network they connect to will be securely protected from external threats, so they're not configured to withstand even the simplest of attacks. This is exactly the opposite of what many security experts recommend: devices should be secure regardless of whether the network they're on is secure or not.

Bruce Schneier's personal WiFi network at home is fully open, because -- in his own words: "If I configure my computer to be secure regardless of the network it's on, then it simply doesn't matter. And if my computer isn't secure on a public network, securing my own network isn't going to reduce my risk very much."[2]

I'm waiting for the great network printer security apocalypse...

I ran a quick nmap command (nmap -T4 -A -v -PE [IP address]) on a few of the many printers indexed by Google, and here's a typical result, showing tons of open ports and passwordless login options (I've deleted the hostname and IP address to protect the innocent):

  Starting Nmap 5.21 ( http://nmap.org ) at 2013-01-25 12:15 EST
  NSE: Loaded 36 scripts for scanning.
  Initiating Ping Scan at 12:15
  Scanning XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX [1 port]
  Completed Ping Scan at 12:15, 0.10s elapsed (1 total hosts)
  Initiating Parallel DNS resolution of 1 host. at 12:15
  Completed Parallel DNS resolution of 1 host. at 12:15, 0.14s elapsed
  Initiating Connect Scan at 12:15
  Scanning [HOSTNAME] (XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX) [1000 ports]
  Discovered open port 23/tcp on XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX
  Discovered open port 21/tcp on XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX
  Discovered open port 443/tcp on XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX
  Discovered open port 80/tcp on XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX
  Increasing send delay for XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX from 0 to 5 due to max_successful_tryno increase to 5
  Increasing send delay for XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX from 5 to 10 due to max_successful_tryno increase to 6
  Warning: XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX giving up on port because retransmission cap hit (6).
  Discovered open port 14000/tcp on XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX
  Discovered open port 631/tcp on XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX
  Discovered open port 280/tcp on XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX
  Completed Connect Scan at 12:15, 37.26s elapsed (1000 total ports)
  Initiating Service scan at 12:15
  Scanning 7 services on [HOSTNAME] (XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX)
  Completed Service scan at 12:16, 13.09s elapsed (7 services on 1 host)
  NSE: Script scanning XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX.
  NSE: Starting runlevel 1 (of 1) scan.
  Initiating NSE at 12:16
  Completed NSE at 12:16, 3.57s elapsed
  NSE: Script Scanning completed.
  Nmap scan report for [HOSTNAME] (XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX)
  Host is up (0.11s latency).
  Not shown: 978 closed ports
  PORT      STATE    SERVICE      VERSION
  21/tcp    open     ftp          HP LaserJet P4014 printer ftpd
  |_ftp-anon: Anonymous FTP login allowed
  23/tcp    open     telnet       HP JetDirect telnetd
  25/tcp    filtered smtp
  80/tcp    open     http         HP-ChaiSOE 1.0 (HP LaserJet http config)
  | html-title: hp LaserJet 9050
  |_Requested resource was http://XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX/hp/device/this.LCDispatcher
  111/tcp   filtered rpcbind
  135/tcp   filtered msrpc
  139/tcp   filtered netbios-ssn
  280/tcp   open     http         HP-ChaiSOE 1.0 (HP LaserJet http config)
  | html-title: hp LaserJet 9050
  |_Requested resource was http://XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX/hp/device/this.LCDispatcher
  443/tcp   open     ssl/http     HP-ChaiSOE 1.0 (HP LaserJet http config)
  | html-title: hp LaserJet 9050
  |_Requested resource was http://XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX/hp/device/this.LCDispatcher
  445/tcp   filtered microsoft-ds
  515/tcp   filtered printer
  631/tcp   open     http         HP-ChaiSOE 1.0 (HP LaserJet http config)
  | html-title: hp LaserJet 9050
  |_Requested resource was http://XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX/hp/device/this.LCDispatcher
  1433/tcp  filtered ms-sql-s
  1720/tcp  filtered H.323/Q.931
  3168/tcp  filtered unknown
  4550/tcp  filtered unknown
  6000/tcp  filtered X11
  6112/tcp  filtered dtspc
  8654/tcp  filtered unknown
  9100/tcp  filtered jetdirect
  14000/tcp open     tcpwrapped
  19315/tcp filtered unknown
  Service Info: Device: printer

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4412714

[2] http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/01/my_open_wirele...

meaty4• 13 years ago

The same goes for smart tvs. Most of them you can push stuff to via dnla without a password. Much amusement to be had.

josephlord2• 13 years ago

I think the Sony TV's offer an onscreen pop-up before accepting commands from unregistered DLNA controllers although maybe that can be faked (and maybe there is a flaw, I've never explored it deeply).

mattkirman• 13 years ago

A few months ago I erroneously port scanned our office HP networked printers (I meant to scan our internal servers but a typo meant I selected the wrong IP range). As soon as nmap encountered the JetDirect ports every single printer spewed out a dozen pages of total gibberish. Put it this way - I bet the owners of the printers you just scanned are slightly puzzled why their printer kicked into life.

More worryingly is that on many unpatched HP printers[1] it is entirely possible to push an unauthorised firmware update through port 9100.[2]

[1] Enabling OS updates is one thing but I wonder how many businesses actively update their printers to the latest firmware versions?

[2] http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.js...

cs7022• 13 years ago

mattkirman: nothing happened to the owners of those printers, because I didn't run nmap with the "--allports" option. As the man page explains, by default nmap doesn't send anything to port 9100 precisely to avoid running into this issue:

  --allports (Don't exclude any ports from version detection).
      By default, Nmap version detection skips TCP port 9100 because some
      printers simply print anything sent to that port, leading to dozens
      of pages of HTTP GET requests, binary SSL session requests, etc.
      This behavior can be changed by modifying or removing the Exclude
      directive in nmap-service-probes, or you can specify --allports to
      scan all ports regardless of any Exclude directive.

dragonbonheur2• 13 years ago

IMO Bruce Schneider should be more careful because lots of routers are very capable general-purpose computers and he's definitely responsible for what goes out of his IP address.

stephen_g• 13 years ago

Just because his WiFi is open doesn't necessarily mean that you'll be able to access his router configuration. And as he says, having an open network means that you have an excuse if someone does use your internet for something illegal...

And it's Schneier.

KwanEsq• 13 years ago

Interestingly, if you try to browse far into the results, Google decided it actually only has 73 to display (after telling it to include ommitted similar results).

chanux2• 13 years ago

I think Google is cleaning it up. (shows only 13 results for me)

Falling3• 13 years ago

That's with similar entries omitted. You need to go to the second page and have it repeat the search with those entries included.

raphman• 13 years ago

add a number to the search term, e.g. "123"...

eli2• 13 years ago

Google makes only a rough estimate of the total number of results. Try it on any query that returns a relatively small number of results.

jrochkind1• 13 years ago

86000 is certainly a _rough_ estimate of, um, 17.

josh2600• 13 years ago

So... Where's Ang Cui at?

In case you guys haven't seen it, Ang Cui is the guy who did the Cisco hack last month and he's also the guy with the coolest resume on the planet.

He actually found a way to compromise printers during the print process, so by printing his resume, he pwns your printer. This seems like a bull in the china shop situation for that code.

kefs• 13 years ago

This is what you're talking about.

And for those that haven't seen it.. do yourself a favour and sit through the entire hour-long video; you won't regret it.

http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/01/hack-turns-the-cisco...

FollowSteph3• 13 years ago

I'd hate to be at the top of that google search result!!

pbhjpbhj9• 13 years ago

I've a vague recollection that Google stepped in to prevent such searches working in the past?

modernerd• 13 years ago

Some of the IPs are registered to large US universities, who list abuse/tech support email addresses in their records. I've already emailed several with a headsup and had a couple of "thank you!"s in reply.

flxmglrb• 13 years ago

You're lucky you haven't gotten accused of "hacking" yet.

KMag2• 13 years ago

Smart good Samaritans still use dead drop email addresses.

smallegan• 13 years ago

Those poor IT Support guys that get a call because their small business clients network is going down due to everyone hitting their printer(s) at once because they show up on the first page :-\

jagermo• 13 years ago

As far as I know this problem has been around for years. If you want to dive deeper into this, i recommend you visit Shodan (http://www.shodanhq.com/)

kabdib• 13 years ago

I wrote a scriptable "chooser" when I was at Apple -- it let you programmatically find and select a printer to print to.

I enumerated every printer on campus (about 900 of them at the time, I think), and came /this close/ to printing a snarky page -- a fake version of the "Five Star News" internal company news -- on each one of them. Decided not to; probably a good career move that I resisted that urge.

paulhauggis• 13 years ago

Someone did just this in my high school. They nearly got expelled.

_casperc• 13 years ago

Asking from ignorance here, is there a common protocol in use to communicate with printers e.g. find, interact with (print) and query (ask for toner level for instance) them?

Seems it would make a valuable tool for managing a larger number of printers, to know when to switch the toner for instance.

achillean• 13 years ago

This is actually one of the earliest searches that was used on the Shodan search engine! Shodan specializes in finding all devices connected to the Internet (including Telnet, SSH, FTP, SNMP etc.):

http://www.shodanhq.com/search?q=hp+jetdirect http://www.shodanhq.com/search?q=laserjet http://www.shodanhq.com/search?q=HP-ChaiSOE

tlrobinson• 13 years ago

Webcams too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5116676

humanspecies• 13 years ago

This is truly an old hack, from the days of Altavista, you can find all sorts of open devices and even file folders(I think they've censored those results now) on the internet.

rbchv• 13 years ago

Use this only to test your own printers. http://cdn.memegenerator.net/instances/400x/33855503.jpg

feefie• 13 years ago

How can I tell if my home printer is securely protected? Is there a good web page or text book anyone can recommend that will teach me more details about this? Thanks.

andreasvc• 13 years ago

In a home network you typically have a router that separates your LAN (local area network) from the internet and shares one public IP among the devices in your network; in that case you have little to worry about. You can tell by the kinds of IP addresses your devices have: if it starts with 192.168.x.y, 172.x.y.z, or 10.x.y.z, then it's not reachable from the internet. The problem with these printers is that on their network there's no such separation and they are listening on a publicly routed IP address, but they've been designed with the tacit assumption that they will be used on a secured network.

X-Istence5• 13 years ago

Unless you have IPv6 turned on ... in which case many of these printers will automatically grab an IPv6 and be publicly accessible.

GBond• 13 years ago

If you recall from the early days of google, there are plenty of indexed dark data that Google actively scrubs out of the public results. For example it was trivial at one point to find credit card numbers and social security numbers.

kristopolous• 13 years ago

And bam, junk fax companies are back in business.

mhurron• 13 years ago

They never were out of business.

mentat• 13 years ago

A friendly thing to do would be develop a script that took the google results, checked with whois for abuse address and sent emails. Of course that could also end up with one being sent to jail for a long time.

plumeria3• 13 years ago

Why would anyone go to jail for this?

csense2• 13 years ago

The nail that sticks up gets hammered.

If someone else later does something bad with the publicly accessible printer and there's a witch hunt for the responsible party, and the only lead they have is that you emailed them about the possibility in advance...then they'll go after you, even though you were just trying to do a good thing.

And if you're expecting the victim / police / legal system to understand that, technically speaking, it could have literally been anyone with an Internet connection...Or if you think that your good intentions and lack of criminal record mean that the most you'll get is a slap on the wrist even if they think your email "proves" that you did it...you're quite naive, especially given all the recent coverage of Aaron Swartz.

pbhjpbhj9• 13 years ago

Isn't it required that there's an abuse@ address to comply with RFCs. So take Google link list, do a reverse domain lookup, uniq, and email abuse@$(those domains).

bitwize• 13 years ago

You did this from your house?

What are you, stoned or stupid?

TranceMan2• 13 years ago

>What happened to you today?

My printer got slashdotted :(

> Eh?

tmosleyIII• 13 years ago

You can find a lot of open machines and sensitive information using Google, this one for the HP printers was submitted to the Google Hacking Database[1] in 2004.

[1] http://www.exploit-db.com/google-dorks/

hippich• 13 years ago

And again - so many wasted IPv4s...

walshemj• 13 years ago

yes why would a printer need to be externally addressable - the problem will only get worse if ipv6 (aka ipv4 with rivets as the sainted verity stobb calls it) takes off.

Aloha• 13 years ago

I used to do it so I could print stuff for consumption or filling out when I got home from the field... also, because I could (a good reason for anything). Now I use IPP for the same purpose, less security risk.

meaty4• 13 years ago

So within 24 hours, lots of people are going to find out what a goatse is I reckon.

Even better, a lot of people in the UK have Thomson routers which have an easily calculable WPA default password. Most of these also have smart tvs these days too which will allow anything to be pushed to them.

pbhjpbhj9• 13 years ago

>Even better, a lot of people in the UK have Thomson routers which have an easily calculable WPA default password. //

That rather looks to oversteps the legal line.

meaty4• 13 years ago

Probably yes, but there is no excuse for incompetence on the part of the ISPs when they ship routers to the customers.

daralthus• 13 years ago

Make sure to watch Ang Cui's demonstration on printer malware at 28c3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njVv7J2azY8

sandycheeks• 13 years ago

The first thing I thought of was a course that I took decades ago that discussed using printers for covert channels to get data out of secure networks.

I wonder if any of those are honeypots. It may be interesting to see if any visitors do something clever or unexpected.

afita• 13 years ago

I'm surprised nobody mentioned PrintFS in this thread: http://www.remote-exploit.org/articles/printfs/index.html

kunai• 13 years ago

I did the Google search, and while the first page does indeed show 86K results, as soon as I navigate to the second, the number drops to 13...

Am I the only one with this problem, or did Google really not index "thousands of publicly accessible HP printers"?

deadairspace• 13 years ago

Wow. There is at least one printer on there in a US governmental department, and on one of the settings pages is a huge list of emails of employees. And now I'm probably on some kind of list.

hn-miw-i• 13 years ago

One million trees just died. The problem with some of the earlier HP printers was that they would accept unsigned firmware updates, you could literally reflash the thing with an update instruction in postscript.

Some work was done at Columbia University with developing trojanised firmware, i recall a firmware that could transmit CC# over tcp when it saw then in the print stream.

Extreme care must be taken if connecting printers to the Internet. It's at best a horrible idea and I'd say that most of these are unknown to their owners. Hopefully this gets some MSM coverage and people address the connected printer problem forever. (not likely)

fnordfnordfnord• 13 years ago

Time for fun. Insert Coin, PC Load Letter, etc. Good times. http://miscellany.kovaya.com/2007/10/insert-coin.html

Google has indexed thousands of publicly accessible HP printers

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