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Google has indexed thousands of publicly accessible HP printers

port3000.co.uk

61–70 of 149 posts

Re: Google has indexed thousands of publicly accessible HP printers

#61
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, this will get you arrested, you will have a huge fine and probation, and prison time is not off the table. I'll refer you to the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, which does not just govern unsolicited e-mail, but all commercial mail which the law defines as electronic communication (bulk faxes, etc.)

Lets not overreact here. The printers are on public wire. You had not done any crime by using Google to find them. You obtained access to their open HP admin panel via public link with no password or credentials you had to pass. You haven't stole any information and, furthermore, there is NO confidential information even to be stolen to start with. On the top of that, you cannot even determine who they are (name, com…

I think it would fall under unauthorized access.

Re: Google has indexed thousands of publicly accessible HP printers

#62
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, this will get you arrested, you will have a huge fine and probation, and prison time is not off the table. I'll refer you to the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, which does not just govern unsolicited e-mail, but all commercial mail which the law defines as electronic communication (bulk faxes, etc.)

Lets not overreact here. The printers are on public wire. You had not done any crime by using Google to find them. You obtained access to their open HP admin panel via public link with no password or credentials you had to pass. You haven't stole any information and, furthermore, there is NO confidential information even to be stolen to start with. On the top of that, you cannot even determine who they are (name, com…

But you are not AUTHORISED to access said resources, so you would be in violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

Re: Google has indexed thousands of publicly accessible HP printers

#63
post #30

I wrote a scriptable "chooser" when I was at Apple -- it let you programmatically find and select a printer to print to. I enumerated every printer on campus (about 900 of them at the time, I think), and came /this close/ to printing a snarky page -- a fake version of the "Five Star News" internal company news -- on each one of them. Decided not to; probably a good career move that I resisted that urge.

Someone did just this in my high school. They nearly got expelled.

Re: Google has indexed thousands of publicly accessible HP printers

#64
post #58

A friendly thing to do would be develop a script that took the google results, checked with whois for abuse address and sent emails. Of course that could also end up with one being sent to jail for a long time.

Why would anyone go to jail for this?

Re: Google has indexed thousands of publicly accessible HP printers

#65
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, this will get you arrested, you will have a huge fine and probation, and prison time is not off the table. I'll refer you to the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, which does not just govern unsolicited e-mail, but all commercial mail which the law defines as electronic communication (bulk faxes, etc.)

Lets not overreact here. The printers are on public wire. You had not done any crime by using Google to find them. You obtained access to their open HP admin panel via public link with no password or credentials you had to pass. You haven't stole any information and, furthermore, there is NO confidential information even to be stolen to start with. On the top of that, you cannot even determine who they are (name, com…

Your statement is totally sane. But the legal system isn't. Typing a public URL passes for "hacking" in our crazy courts.

Re: Google has indexed thousands of publicly accessible HP printers

#66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's some law against postal fraud that says whatever they send you though the post is yours (to avoid exactly this kind of scam) You can try not paying the invoice and see what happens.

Yeah - this was in 1997...

Rest assured that this was going on with copiers in the early 80's as well!

Re: Google has indexed thousands of publicly accessible HP printers

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lets not overreact here. The printers are on public wire. You had not done any crime by using Google to find them. You obtained access to their open HP admin panel via public link with no password or credentials you had to pass. You haven't stole any information and, furthermore, there is NO confidential information even to be stolen to start with. On the top of that, you cannot even determine who they are (name, com…

But you are not AUTHORISED to access said resources, so you would be in violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

Who says I am not authorised? I can claim that public access is an implicit authorization, like any website! And there is no warning or message in the public control panels.
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