Hackers Can Blow Up Printer Inside Your House

Investigators from Columbia University have found a scary security exploit during their research. This exploit can not only make your individual information open for skilled hackers to steal at will, but can, in addition, end up in the blow up of your printer and as a result setting your whole house on fire. And I am not joking around. Those researchers have found out that certain models of wireless HP LaserJet devices (yet could hypothetically be any wireless model of printers from any manufacturer) are vulnerable to specific malware attack that can grant absolute control of your wireless printer to the hacker from any point of the world.

How this exploit work?

Whenever you send any document to be printed on your wireless printer, if that particular document has this malware code inside it, this code would reinstall all the firmware of your wireless printer, granting full access to the interested hacker that wrote whole code of the malware. And since your printer is wireless due to the Wi-Fi connection, this hacker will be able to have full control of it at any time.

Once a hacker gains this control of the wireless printer, he or she could access all information you send on that printer, potentially stealing all your personal information meant to be printed. But not only are your personal knowledge and identity data at risk because this access will also allow that hacker to totally control the hardware inside your wireless printer and continuously heat up the fuser that is used to parch the ink of the printer on the composition that goes out of it, which will cause that paper to go up in flames and destroy the whole printer during the princes.

How to protect yourself from malware?

So how can you possibly know if the suspicious software infects your wireless printer, and how will you be capable of fixing this issue? At this point, I can say there are no easy ways to detect the malware unless you are willing to throw away the infected wireless printer and replace it with the new one, but that might be pricey. Or, you can make sure your wireless printer is not connected to the internet. To do that, you need to use a wireless printer jammer that will protect its hardware from possible malware attacks.

What do you think about this new hacker component? Write your opinions in the comments!