The mini-movie, The Wolf, stars Hollywood actor Christian Slater, and highlights business printer security loopholes.
HP Inc recently discussed its printer security strategy, including The Wolf, which is a six-minute long video outlining the dangers surrounding printer security. The film, which you can also view below, utilises Slater’s role in the hit TV show Mr. Robot, which centres on hacking, and features Slater as ‘The Wolf’, who walks the viewer through how he hacks business systems through unsecured printers.
The film starts by noting that “there are hundreds of millions of business printers in the world. Less than two percent of them are secure”, and ‘The Wolf’ highlights how hackers are like wolves, and businesses like sheep, hacking printers in one office with a distracting video on the printer’s LCD screen while stealing company information through the unsecure network.
Next, he hacks another office’s entire system through email spam, fooling a worker into opening an email about a birthday gift that contains malware, and again accessing the system because one printer is not secured. He notes that he can steal identities, sensitive client information and more, and while the business might have spent millions on server security, if the printers are not secured it’s all for nothing.
The film concludes with a board meeting in the same company, where someone has accidentally printed important documents at an unsecured printer with no ID sign-in, so anyone else could take the documents from the printer tray. ‘The Wolf’ points out that he can access “all the juicy details” of the company, and points out that he does this “because I can”.
CRN also reported on the video, noting that the movie’s intention is to “encourage businesses to lock down their printers to secure their network”, and citing HP Inc’s claim that the movie “reinforces that security is no longer just the responsibility of the network or is something at the perimeter, but a concern for everyone”.
Its focus on printer security aims to present the OEM “as a prime opportunity for partners to earn additional margins from security services on top of traditional print sales”. HP Inc distributor Westcoast’s Managing Director Alex Tatham told CRN “printer security is an important issue” he was “pleased the vendor is bringing to the fore”, adding “I am delighted HP is bringing the security of all network devices, including printers, to the market. It’s a widely overlooked area and the channel will benefit from looking at this problem”.
Additionally, Quocirca analyst Bob Tarzey noted that “when it comes to securing networks, PCs and servers are among the first to spring to mind for the IT department, but printers are often overlooked”, with “paper still a good way to find out info. It helps criminals on their way into systems just poking about in the wastepaper basket.
“If you print a document about your management responsibilities to others in the company, if you don’t collect it from the printer, it is in plain sight. There are all sorts of data leakage issues. Then the printer itself is a device which is online, so it is hackable, like any IoT device. IT departments worry about PCs and servers, but not the printer.
“They have memories and disks and jobs lined up on them, so when you dispose of a printer, those files may still be there. There have been cases where printers have been found on the second-hand market with secure info on them. There are all sorts of reasons why printers on the network are as equal a threat as other devices on the network”.