Warning As Dangerous Cybersecurity Risks Found In Mainstream Office Printers: Report

Warning As Dangerous Cybersecurity Risks Found In Mainstream Office Printers: Report

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IoT cybersecurity risks are in the headlines again, with new research exposing major vulnerabilities with office printers from the world's leading manufacturers. It turns out that the networked printers in businesses large and small could represent a much greater danger than paper jams and extortionate ink prices. The research reported "remote vulnerabilities" in all printers tested against "various attack vectors—uncovering a large number of zero-day vulnerabilities." What that means, in short, is that those innocuous devices could be the easiest entry point for cyberattackers into small businesses, enterprises and government departments.


NCC Group researchers, Mario Rivas and Daniel Romero conducted a six-month project to identity "vulnerabilities and exploitations relating to devices made by six of the largest enterprise printer makers in the world." And while the researchers uncovered weaknesses that opened devices to Denial of Service (DoS) attacks, of much more concern is the potential for those devices to be used as entry points into corporate networks, with remote code execution and the bypassing of security layers.


The findings will be presented at DEF CON on August 10.


In this instance, the manufacturers impacted (NCC Group says it tested devices from Xerox, HP, Lexmark, Kyocera, Brother, and Ricoh) were alerted and "were able to provide updates to close up the identified vulnerabilities and secure the affected devices against the exploits uncovered by the researchers."


But that's not really the point.


This research follows the recent disclosure from Microsoft that hackers, likely sp ..

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