To find out how many printers were on the menu for our experiment, we searched for IP addresses with open ports on specialized IoT search engines, such as Shodan and Censys. While this does not mean that all 800,000 of these printers were necessarily vulnerable to cyberattacks, our estimates have shown that we could successfully target approximately 500,000 of these devices.Īfter selecting a sample of 50,000 open printers and creating a custom printing script, we managed to print out PDF documents on 27,944 unprotected devices.īefore initiating the experiment, our first step was to gather the total number of available targets.
After filtering out most of the false positives, we were left with more than 800,000 printers that had network printing features enabled and were accessible over the internet. To perform the experiment, we used Internet of Things (IoT) search engines to search for open devices that utilized common printer ports and protocols. In order to help as many people as possible secure their devices against potential cyberattacks, the CyberNews security team accessed 27,944 printers around the world and forced the hijacked devices to print out a short 5-step guide on how to secure a printer, with a link to a more detailed version of the guide on our website. We at CyberNews wanted to show users the importance of protecting printers from becoming easy prey for cybercriminals, so we decided to bring the message home.
Most of us already know the importance of using antivirus, anti-malware, and VPNs to secure our computers, phones, and other devices against potential attacks. Cybersecurity experts at CyberNews hijacked close to 28,000 unsecured printers worldwide and forced them to print out a guide on printer security
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