Remote Printing to an E-Mail Address
This is cool technology from HP:
Each printer with the ePrint capability will be assigned its own e-mail address. If someone wants to print a document from an iPhone, the document will go to HP’s data center, where it is rendered into the correct format, and then sent to the person’s printer. The process takes about 25 seconds.
Maybe this feature was designed with robust security, but I’m not betting on it. The first people to hack the system will certainly be spammers. (For years I’ve gotten more spam on my fax machine than legitimate faxes.) And why would HP fix the spam problem when it will just enable them to sell overpriced ink cartridges faster?
Any other illegitimate uses for this technology?
EDITED TO ADD (7/13): Location-sensitive advertising to your printer.
John Campbell • June 18, 2010 1:51 PM
Isn’t SPAM bad enough?
Everything depends upon whether there is an exploit in the printer, itself, that can be triggered from the outside.
My HP 7250 is on my internal LAN so if it can execute arbitrary code it can siphon my LAN’s topology or perform other attacks.