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Alphane_Moon@lemmy.world

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Brother accused of locking down third-party printer ink cartridges via forced firmware updates, removing older firmware versions from support portals (www.tomshardware.com)

submitted 10 months ago by Alphane_Moon@lemmy.world to c/hardware@lemmy.world

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[–] j4k3@lemmy.world 17 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Why does my printer need any connection to the internet ever? WTF does it need "firmware" for that is not related to criminal stalking and data collection? This sounds as stupid as IoT toasters and toilets.

[–] jet@hackertalks.com 23 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Networked printers are very common, so if there is a vulnerability exposed to the network the printer can be exploited and infect other machines, or copy all printouts etc

[–] cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de 11 points 10 months ago

Printers only need a LAN connection. There is no need to give them internet access.

[–] j4k3@lemmy.world 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

My LaserJet is from '08 and still works great with just a USB (or parallel port... lol). It even does an occasional toner transfer or transparency for printed circuit boards. They making 17+ year printers any more

[–] jet@hackertalks.com 7 points 10 months ago

It is nice to have a discoverable printer on the network that anyone can print to from their laptop or phone. I use that feature all the time, especially on d&d nights

[–] RobotToaster@mander.xyz 3 points 10 months ago (2 children)

WTF does it need “firmware” for

Printing, pretty much every printer ever made has firmware. Your keyboard probably has a firmware.

[–] AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works 4 points 10 months ago

Pretty sure in this context it's referring to firmware updates. Which is how Brother screwed over their existing customers

[–] j4k3@lemmy.world -1 points 10 months ago

Apparently the quotes were not enough to make the oversimplification blatantly obvious

[–] evidences@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Everything with a processor has firmware. Unless you're running a screw type press to print from your PC then your printer has firmware.

[–] j4k3@lemmy.world -1 points 10 months ago

Obviously, but a state machine is not a filesystem as the connectedness implies