Ever wondered what somebody could do by hacking your printer? The intensity of hack attacks may not be deadly, yet they are capable of causing some serious problems. There have been plenty of examples of printer hacks and the cause is more or less known to us.

According to a leading IT website, printers that have the capacity to store data are under serious threat. Hackers usually store illegal content on such network printers. These hard disks act as cache for the incoming printable data to increase the printing speeds.

There are also viruses written for printers which share the information with the outside world. Just like any other viruses, they spread onto other systems but smartly avoid the host. If a virus affects the host, it's often too easy to get found out.

The most common hacks are on HP Laserjets connected to a network and those running java software.

"Some people feel there's no danger because each Java application runs in its own sandbox," said Jesper Jurcenoks, CTO of NetVigilance. "But code running there bypasses your firewall and can infect other systems on your network."