Security News > 2021 > August > What’s *THAT* on my 3D printer? Cloud bug lets anyone print to everyone
Unlike an old-school 2D plotter than can move its printing mechanism side-to-side and top-to-bottom in order to skim across a horizontal surface, a 3D printer can move its print head vertically as well.
To print on a surface, a 2D plotter usually uses some sort of pen that releases ink as the print head moves in the plane.
A 3D printer can be instructed to emit stream of liquid filament from its print head as it moves in space.
If the model becomes poorly balanced and falls over; if the print head gets out of alignment; if the polymer is not quite hot enough to stick, or is too hot to harden in time; if there's even a tiny mistake in any of the co-ordinates in the print job; if an already-printed part of the model buckles out of shape or warps slightly; if the print nozzle suffers a temporary blockage.
Once your 3D printer has got itself into the squeeze-and-squeeze-the-toothpaste-tube state, it will almost certainly keep on squishing out disconnected strands of plastic floss, with nothing to adhere to, until the filament runs out, the printer overheats, or you spot the problem and hit the [Cancel] button.
The users who happened to be linking a printer at that time were able to see each other's printer through auto-discovery, and were able to link to them too! We were notified of a case in which a user started a print on someone else's printer.