In a quest to hone their capabilities by examining a HP multifunction printer (MFP), cybersecurity researchers have encountered a pair of bugs that can be exploited to obtain distant code execution legal rights.
In accordance to the researchers, the vulnerabilities, tracked as CVE-2021-39237 and CVE-2021-39238, exist in the unit’s communications board and font parser. Worryingly, they day again to at least 2013, and have an impact on a significant quantity of printers in HP’s steady.
“There are a number of factors attackers could attain by exploiting these flaws in the way we have described. These vulnerabilities give attackers an successful way to steal data: defenders are not likely to proactively examine the stability of a printer, and so the attacker can simply just sit again and steal whichever data it will come throughout (through personnel printing, scanning, and so on),” the researchers shared in a FAQ.
Moreover, the researchers note that the bugs could enable the attackers to use the compromised MFP as an entry point to transfer by means of the corporate community.
Protecting printers
The researchers have applied the prospect to emphasize how organizations make them selves vulnerable to attacks by not managing printers as just one more endpoint, leaving them unprotected, and in many cases bereft of essential updates.
Moreover, the researchers argue that the condition is not aided by a lack of forensic equipment that can recuperate evidence from MFPs and comparable gadgets. This allows attackers exploit bugs this kind of as the kinds that they’ve learned, whilst leaving very little evidence of their destructive pursuits.
Despite the fact that HP has patched the problems, the researchers have also shared means to enable organizations safe vulnerable MFPs.
For starters, organizations really should hold the USB printing solution disabled to restrict physical use of the device. Secondly, the researchers advocate that community printers be positioned in a independent, firewalled VLAN.
In its place of letting computers in the community to connect with the printers instantly, they really should as a substitute interface with a committed print server, which really should be the only point of interaction to the printer.
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