this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2025
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Have to keep things offline and outdated nowadays π«€ to prevent things like this happening.
Honestly, that's not a terrible idea in general. Like, if you have an Internet-connected device, you have a hook onto your network that someone can exploit down the line, including -- as Rossman points out -- making it function differently than it did at the time of your purchase in ways that you may not like. And even if you trust the manufacturer, that doesn't mean that someone cannot acquire them and then exploit that hook.
Kind of a problem with apps and other software too. Even open-source software, like the xz attack -- the xz package itself was fine, but you had someone, probably a country, intentionally target and try to seize control of an open-source project to exploit the trust that the open-source project had built up. I understand that it's also been a concern with even browser extensions.
The right to push updates to an Internet-connected device, unfortunately, has value. And there are people who will try to figure out ways to take advantage of that.
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I've been saying that for a couple of years now. They started fucking with third party ink at least a year ago
I've always promoted commercial inktank printers for people who do a lot of printing, and people always mentioned Brother as a response, but tbh I've never really hopped on the bandwagon to shill for any particular company.
Just a good commercial inktank printer. A regular printer with all the bells and whistles is going to cost you like $100 and $45 for each ink pack you buy, you might as well just spend $450 on a printer, write it off as home office expense, and call it good.
I have a Brother MFC-9340CDW that I salvaged from work last year; we replaced it because it kept getting a ghost "paper jam" every time you tried to print something. Turns out the cause is an $18 board that's known to fail. Scanner still works fine though, strangely.
I also have a Kyocera FS-3900DN b&w laser printer from 2006...or somewhere around there. It does the thing, and can even be managed with a CUPS server since it has 10/100 networking.
Now to figure out how to disable automatic firmware updates on the Brother π€
I have a Canon color laser printer which works pretty well and doesnβt pull any of this shit. Theyβre probably the last one standing now.
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The last bid I reviewed for a new office recommended Brother printers (woot) but the color laser had toner lock-in. I recommended an alternative and the owner agreed.
Too bad these companies won't know about the products they don't sell because of this crap.
Can't watch right now, but is there a list of affected devices?
Glad I've got an Brother laser that has no network connectivity.
Strictly-speaking, in this case, it's not the ability to be network-connected that's at issue, but rather the ability to push updates to firmware.
I don't know what type of computer you have it connected to, but Linux has a system that will automatically update firmware on USB-attached devices if the attached Linux computer is Internet-connected.
$ sudo fwupdtool get-devices
Will show you a list of managed devices.
I'm sure that Windows and MacOS have comparable schemes.
On Linux, I'm sure that you can blacklist a device for updates.
I'd guess that it's possible to get one of those dedicated USB print servers. Those probably don't support updating firmware on an attached printer. I might have some questions as to how much I'd trust a no-name one of those on my network itself, but...
Shit. I didn't even think of that. I'm using fedora. Tomorrow I'll be blocking firmware updates for the printer. Thank you for pointing that out.
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Go with a bottle printer, or at least a laser and get a standalone scanner for USB. Cartridges suck, literally, all-in-ones even moreso.
I didn't even know he had a brother.
Are there actually any good printers? I would pay more for the printer itself if you just don't try and scam me afterwards. It feels like a hopeless space.
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I heard Brother was good, then I spent way too long formatting different USB sticks in different cluster sizes and formats, and never got ours to work with any of them. Don't buy Brother if you want that feature, either.
FYI an MBR table with a fat32 partition is probably what it was looking for. If that doesn't work odds are the port is broken
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