Security News > 2020 > August > Researchers Hijack 28,000 Printers to Show How Easily They Can Be Hacked
Researchers have once again demonstrated that many printers can be hacked remotely, by hijacking 28,000 devices and instructing them to print out a printer security guide.
The researchers said the document was printed by nearly 28,000 of those devices, which suggests that 56% of exposed printers can be hijacked.
"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 performing the search, we made sure that the open devices we found were actual printers, as opposed to unrelated services that simply used those ports for other purposes," they explained.
Experts demonstrated in the past that many printers can be hacked and abused due to insecure configurations.
Back in 2016, a researcher hijacked thousands of printers and caused them to print anti-Semitic flyers.