They use the small flash inside the DRM chip in the cartridge to store the telemetry, then the e-waste companies are paid by HP to read and send to the mothership the contents of the chips sent to recycle

    • IngeniousRocks (They/She) @lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      24 hours ago

      You’d first need to get the flash to store other data, requiring malicious firmware modifications.

      Like, its not impossible but I really can’t see anything nefarious happening to make airgapped printer that would be that big a deal.

      • BigDanishGuy@sh.itjust.works
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        16 hours ago

        Lets say a malicious actor infiltrates the supply chain and loads custom firmware on the device. Somehow the malicious firmware avoids detection, and is installed in a secured environment.

        What can be exfiltrated in the flash is probably pretty limited, but top 5 usernames and their top 5 IP-addresses, perhaps as many jobtitles as can be stored correlated to the above information. And now the attacker can extrapolate all sorts of classified information.

        • TonyTonyChopper@mander.xyz
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          15 hours ago

          supply chain

          ok what if they just installed a 4G transmitter. Would be way less work and a higher success rate for retrieving anything

          • 4am@lemmy.zip
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            11 hours ago

            And easy to catch in an environment so secure that airgapping is necessary and supply chain infiltration is worthwhile