Spam for your Printer!!!

Spam is not the word we wish to here anytime. The word is quite common and at the same time, sends shivers among many. On an average, most people get ten times more spam mail than the actual intended e-mail itself. Forget spam mail for now, there is a new research info coming in that shows vulnerabilities on web browsers that could be exploited to spam your printer.

An independent security researcher, Aaron Weaver has demonstrated that a particular technology – Cross Site Printing, could be used to spam your printer i.e send unwanted print jobs to your printer.

Cross Site Printing is a hacking technology that hackers use to inject malicious code onto webpages on the internet. When people browse such pages, a javascript code is sent to the user’s computer which initiates a print command automatically. The malicious code can send commands ranging from printing out pages to any other logical command like deleting certain files or ftping files.

The hack works on Internet Explorer and on Mozilla Firefox as well. But, as for as printer spamming goes, only network printers could be spammed and not the ones connected to PCs.