HP will pay hackers up to $10,000 to break its printers

HP is inquiring scientists to hack its printers.
Sarah Tew/CNET

It’s the “Workplace Space” fantasy appear correct. Nicely, variety of.
HP just isn’t inquiring people to smash its printers to parts, but the company is ready to fork out folks to crack its application aside.
On Tuesday, HP announced its 1st bug bounty plan that precisely targets its printers, providing as significantly as $10,000 to hackers who can find vulnerabilities on its devices.
Bug bounties are a prevalent way for organizations to discover stability flaws, with payouts as higher as $100,000 for critical vulnerabilities. Hackers have been ready to make a entire-time occupation breaking computer software and reporting bugs before the vulnerabilities are utilized maliciously. Businesses these as Google and Facebook have turned to bug bounties as a way to bolster their stability.
HP quietly commenced its application in May possibly with 34 researchers signing up. It has already paid $10,000 to a hacker who observed a significant flaw with its printers, Shivaun Albright, the company’s chief technologist for printer protection, reported in an interview final week.
The firm is focused on printer stability since of the vulnerabilities of world wide web of issues devices, she reported. Whilst there is certainly a major target on linked units and their stability flaws, it really is usually on world wide web cameras, sensible televisions or lightbulbs, not printers, Albright claimed.
But printers may well be the oldest and most popular IoT unit a man or woman owns, the HP technologist mentioned.
“They’ve been close to for a long time, even before the term ‘IoT’ was out there,” she reported. “The challenge is, why do prospects not take into consideration printers as IoT?”
It isn’t like printers are immune to assaults.
In 2016, the Mirai botnet — a significant community of hacked products made use of to wreak havoc online — caused a key world wide web outage that took down common web-sites like Twitter, Netflix and Reddit. The botnet made use of hacked IoT products, like webcams and DVRs, but printers were also a component of that mix, Albright mentioned.
HP’s bug bounty plan will be run by way of Bugcrowd, a system that facilitates payouts and invites. The system is at this time private, with Bugcrowd dealing with which scientists are invited to be part of. Albright said HP is intrigued in building it community in the potential, but is keeping it shut for now to improved control incoming vulnerabilities.
The invited researchers have distant access to 15 printers, which are isolated in HP’s workplaces. From their pcs at residence, they can poke at and pry into these machines to find concealed vulnerabilities.
For a $10,000 payout, Albright explained, the researcher would have to obtain significant flaws like remote code execution, which would enable an attacker to get complete regulate of the printer.
If they uncover and report any flaws, HP will spend them for the discovery and then established out to deal with it on its subsequent update.
“We’re fixing these issues pretty rapidly and turning them all over so they are not uncovered in the wild,” Albright reported.
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