HP Warns Of Critical Security Holes In Various Printers

The printer manufacturer HP warns of a critical security hole that affects a number of printers. There is also a vulnerability that was rated as high. According to this, both vulnerabilities can be exploited by hackers to penetrate user systems.

According to the report the vulnerabilities were discovered by security researchers at F-Secure. They have summarized the vulnerabilities under the name “Printing Shellz” and posted information on the F-Secure blog. According to current knowledge, numerous HP office printers are affected. HP has already confirmed that a large number of its printer models are vulnerable to a new critical buffer overflow bug. The vulnerability classified as critical is listed as “CVE-2021-39238” and is described as follows:

CVE-2021-39238

“Certain HP LaserJet, HP LaserJet Managed, HP PageWide, and HP PageWide Managed products can be vulnerable to a potential buffer overflow.

A buffer overflow occurs when the memory buffer becomes overloaded with more data than it can handle Malfunctions and system crashes can lead to attackers and threat actors exploiting the vulnerability to gain access to systems.”

The New firmware is available

The second vulnerability (CVE-2021-39237) was classified as high and is believed to be due to a hardware problem. This vulnerability has also been patched. HP is already making new firmware updates available for all potentially vulnerable devices, and users should install them urgently. To check whether your own printer is possibly affected, you can see the list of all models including the new, patched firmware versions at HP.