Photocopier Security

[houseisland]

Not new news. It broke last month I think, but I missed it at the time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpUjW64McoM


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It is my pure and virtuous heart that
gives me the strength of ten!

[CeeBee]

What do you mean by "it broke last month"???
Copier manufacturers have been offering encryption as either a paid add-on or standard feature for many years...

[slgrieb]

Just like back up software?

[houseisland]

What do you mean by "it broke last month"???
Copier manufacturers have been offering encryption as either a paid add-on or standard feature for many years...

I know nothing about photocopiers and MFPs beyond how to connect them to a network, how to set up print queues, how to get them to talk to Exchange, how to get them to scan to files on a server, how to set up user accounts, how to load consumables, and how to clear paper jams.

The internal workings are not of my concern. There is generally a service contract on them from the manufacturer or from a specialized reseller.

I knew they had hard drives. I did not realize that everything cached to the hard drive was there semi-permanently, overwritten only as space was required.

I work for medium-sized IT firm with scary smart people who design and build multi-million dollar server farms.

The only person in the entire company who understood about the document caching on photocopier hard drives was our senior break-fix technician who is certified on commercial HP MFPs. The story was not news to him.

So what I mean by "broke last month" is that the story was conveyed as news last month to the general public who had no knowledge that photocopiers contained hard drives never mind that most of the documents ever scanned remain on those hard drives and that they are in most cases easily recovered.

Clear enough?


____________________________________________



It is my pure and virtuous heart that
gives me the strength of ten!

[CeeBee]

So what I mean by "broke last month" is that the story was conveyed as news last month to the general public

It was on the news (TV ) loooong time ago - if I remember well at least 1 year.
What is next, breaking news that old recycled computers can reveal secrets? Pffffft...