And this is why I’ll never connect my working printer to the internet.
Taking a USB stick to it to print is annoying, but fuck this shit.
They’re all horrible companies
What’s stopping you from connecting it to the local network but denying internet access? E.g. via a firewall rule or separate VLAN?
effort
understandable, have a good day
Most relatable comment ever.
As if using an USB stick to print isn’t more effort 😂
Just connect it to a Server (like a raspi) via USB and share the printer through CUPS
Its a little tedious to set up, but it works
This is the way.
Why do that when you could just connect it to the LAN and put it on a separate VLAN?
Because it’s a lot simpler and avoids the issue of dealing with printer drivers on all your machines.
Because the built-in networking stack on printers is garbage and having to install drivers on every client sucks.
I’ve never had issues with networking or drivers with my Brother printer. I don’t have any Apple devices, but on Windows and Linux I just use the drivers that come with the OS.
I could see the argument that it’s more air gapped this way. Without having physical access to the Pi (or at least SSH access), it’d be hard to get any network connection through USB.
But personally, I just blocked outgoing traffic from the printer.
How many cups does it take to transfer the printer over?
I think you can just use 1 large bucket instead of many small cups. Faster that way.
Is there a step by step anywhere to achieve this? I’m adept in tech. But don’t have the training or knowledge to just do it
My general rule of thumb is that any software update has a 50% chance of making the software worse. So I don’t update anything without a good reason. That includes not just device updates but things like phone apps.
Yeah this is terrible from a security and usability point of view. Just stop using proprietary bs systems. Why do you think so many technical people use Linux and avoid IoT devices like the plague? So we don’t have to deal with companies doing stuff we don’t like without a choice.
Keeping up-to-date with security updates is incredibly important.
I’ve never had an issue with viruses, I’m not a big company nor do I download sketchy files. I feel like if there’s something serious enough to affect me (like the iPhone Unicode character exploit), I’d hear about it.
You’ll never have an issue until you do. Not to mention all the issues you don’t know about.
But not so much for the printers…
Printer botnet goes brr.
Printers always go brr.
Unless they’re HP, then they only go brr if you buy their ink. And apparently Brother now too.
Every CVE I flip a coin.
Makes life more exciting.
It’s going to get to the point where you might be better off going back to dot matrix if tank-based inkjet printers are somehow locked down via chemical DRM too.
Et tu Brute! :(
deleted by creator
Every single company.
All it takes is your favorite company to suddenly be run by a CEO who wants to maximize profits or increase shareholder value, or worse, think they’re God’s Gift to the World. Or in the flip side, they’re fighting for survival so they have to make scummy decisions to keep afloat.
Pro tip: don’t have favorite companies, have favorite products. And don’t assume the next gen of your favorite product will be good.
The issues with each are very different:
- Proton - CEO sucks and for some reason is sucking up to Trump; products are still good
- Mozilla - PR team sucks, though AFAIK the product is still fine, and you can use a fork to avoid the PR/legal team
- Brother - actively screwing you
Buy an ecotank printer, they’re more expensive initially but that’s because they actually make you pay for the printer
Ecotank’s use liquid ink that you fill in tanks instead of cartridges
There’s no way they can check the ink on ecotank printers
I fear the day my 2014 hp LaserJet dies. There won’t be a decent printer on the market…
In case anyone was thinking this applies only to inkjet printers: no, it ONLY seems to apply to laser printers – the thing that Brother used to be known for. Where the article says “ink”, they mean “toner”. There is no ink in a laser printer.
Could this be anything related to government printer tracking requirements?
I believe that only applies to ink jet. You can hardly make secret dots in B&W.
There is something similar for B&W laser printing. Text is never 100% black, but rastered. You can digitally hide a whole lot of information in microraster on a page of printed text.
Text is never 100% black, but rastered.
Does “rastered” mean the image is mapped onto a very fine grid and each square is given a 0-100 value for intensity of ink? I looked it up, and it seemed like the squares are given a binary value, but this is nowhere near my wheelhouse and I’m honestly not sure I understood the Wikipedia page, let alone the references
It is actually quite easy: “Black” print does not mean that 100% of all pixels are actually set. Print pixels are never perfect squares, so even if the printer only prints half of the dots, the print is still dark enough. If not, it could print 70% or 80%, but lets stick to 50% for ease of argument.
So instead of
XXXXXXXX XXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXit would print
X X X X X X X X X X X XFor you, it would still be a “roughly black” spot (keep in mind these 8x3 pixel are 0.032mm wide and 0.012mm high on good laser printer).
Would you notice if the pattern was slightly different, like
X X X X X XX X X X X XMake a bonanza of those small changes nobody can see, and you can hide thosands of bytes of data in those patterns on any printed page.
Wait, I thought that’s something that only color laser do with yellow toner…
Edit: Possibly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printer_tracking_dots
Nice, Brother was the last one standing in my mind.
I’m glad I have an IoT vlan without internet access. Nothing is allowed to phone home here.
10 years later
Printers now include embedded cellular modems as backup for OTA firmware updates, ink subscriptions and telemetry.Printer Faraday cage.
This shit happened to me recently. Installed firmware update and immediately my 3rd party toner stops working. Try to find old firmware to roll back to and couldn’t locate it anywhere. Found some for other models via Google drive links in Reddit posts, but nothing for my printer.
I replaced the toner with new 3rd party toner which worked. And now I’ll never install another firmware update on the printer and should probably block it from the internet.
Even with a backup, there are chance they put a “security feature” to prevent downgrade.
I think its time we deprecate most forms of printing. Clearly corporations cannot be trusted to operate these kinds of companies.
I suggest whoever has old firmware files to upload them to the Internet Archive (if they allow those).
Internet Archive is extremely lax in what it allows
Got this link from reddacted
Going to be honest, didn’t realize my Brother laser printer got firmware updates, lol.
In 7 years I’ve replaced the toner cartridge once, given that the stater cartridge isn’t very full I imagine it’ll be awhile before I have to replace it again, at least.
Nooo, you were the only remaining printer company that wasn’t a customer-hating dumpster fire of a company!
It’s like every company that wasn’t complete shit just suddenly decided to…go to complete shit.
With the current US government, there’s far more roadblocks to running a company ethically than turning it to absolute shit
Brother is a Japanese company.
If regulators don’t stop them from doing it, the CEO’s of publicly traded companies will get the boot from the board for not doing it. They have a fiduciary duty to be as shitty as humanly possible.
We need laws to stop this, but the politicians are all bribed not to.
They have a fiduciary duty to be as shitty as humanly possible.
They don’t – that’s a cargo-cult misunderstanding of Dodge v. Ford Motor Co – but it’s so widely believed I guess it might as well be true.
If the people sitting on the Supreme Court believe it, and I believe the majority of those shitbags do, then that is unfortunately the law as it stands.
But when the law is unethical, I don’t see why we should be lawful.
Dude, Brother is not even an US company - like most big printer companies it’s Japanese and traded at the Tokyo stock exchange.
So… You’re arguments are invalid and only show your americentric world view.
Well, there is plenty of evidence to the contrary, such as the way Costco mostly operates. Being the good guys has a lot of brand value. With a little nurturing of the vast propaganda machine known as advertising, that could be improved.
That’s what happens when the government allows it openly.
It’s like every company that was
n’t completeplaying the social good will game and didn’t appear at a casual glance to be shit just suddenly decided to…goto complete shit.masks off, because they saw it might finally be acceptable to be ghouls again.Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure I FTFY. Wish it weren’t so, but that’s definitely what it looks like…
The mask of humanity fall[s] from capital. It has to take it off to kill everyone – everything you love; all the hope and tenderness in the world. It has to take it off, just for one second. To do the deed.
- The Deserter, Disco Elysium
They are just taking the mask off since they don’t have to wear it right now.
Game is such a fucking gem. I gotta do a replay soon.
They are just taking the mask off since they don’t have to wear it right now.
Cuts into profit margins pretending to not be a threat to the continued existence of the species and ecosystem as a whole. Gotta buy that 15th mega-yacht.
Something something, I’ll bring the BBQ sauce.
Unrestrained Capitalism. Without those pesky regulations, companies can charge us all unlimited amounts and not have to consider our rights or health/safety.
The government has mostly turned a blind eye to dark pattern business for years, and now the president is openly saying that he encourages it and wants companies to step up their game. Of course things are going to get worse, especially now where everyone will have forgotten this by the next election, so it’ll get to stay as “the norm”
