Enrique Lores, CEO of HP, in a new interview CNBC Television / YouTube [video] explained to the American TV channel CNBC why the company's printers are blocked when installing unofficial cartridges. Here is his comment:
We have seen [evidence] that a virus can be sewn into the cartridge. Through the cartridge, [the virus] enters the printer, and from the printer it enters the local network.
It seems that this explains HP's desire to continue using the Dynamic Security system, because of which the company regularly receives lawsuits. This system checks the ink cartridge for the presence of a chip and other HP components. If there are none, the printer refuses to work.
It is noteworthy that in the discussion of the situation on Mastodon, cybersecurity and printer experts are skeptical about such a fear of viruses.
As a person who works for another company that produces inkjet printers, I would call a pretty bad design in which you can create a cartridge containing a virus.
The cartridge should contain a fairly small amount of information. If the data is not in the format you expect, just refuse to use it (HP is very good at this).
It is worth noting that technically hacking is indeed possible. HP itself refers to the article HP Bug Bounty Program Finds Reprogrammable Chips Open Printers to Malware / Actionable Intelligence 2022 from Actionable Intelligence cybersecurity researchers. The employee was actually able to hack the printer using an unofficial cartridge, whereas with an HP cartridge it was not possible to repeat the hack. However, there is no evidence that such a thing has ever been used by intruders. You can also bet that HP's task as a manufacturer is not to ban third—party cartridges, but to make sure that the system is protected from such types of hacking.
And what do you think? Does hacking protection justify blocking third-party cartridges or not? Share your opinion in the comments!
