JemmyMan-in-the-Middle PCB Unlocks HP Ink Cartridges
hackaday.com/2024/09/28/man-in-the-middle-pcb-u…
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vext01Recently they threatened to brick HP printers that use third-party cartridges if detected
Simple. Don't buy HP ever again.
If a company intentionally bricks your device then they are malicious and under no circumstances should you buy another product of theirs.
They should be legally required to refund full purchase price plus interest in every case. If there are legal fees to get compliance, multiply that plus the refund by five.
MisterFrogLuckily/unluckily (because effort), in Australia, consumer guarantees on length of time you can get a refund are vague.
E.g. it doesn't matter that a fridge's manufacturer warranty is only 2 years, you expect that to last longer.
With effort, you could probably get a fridge fixed like 5 years after purchase with some badgering / threatening small claims.
Bricking your product would probably fall under that category.
This is wild speculation, not a lawyer.
gedaliyahThis happened to me. I honestly thought that it was something I did wrong, until I learned a little more.
Draconic NEOGlad to see that there's finally some effort to hack the shitty anti-consumer printer ink DRM.
Quite honestly, back in the 90s I thought it was essential to have a printer. Back then I used to buy a binder, and a bunch of those plastic paper holding sleeves. And I'd print out entire gamefaqs which were sometimes 300 pages.
Then ink started to get expensive. So I stopped. Then now these new printers have DRM. So I just never bought a printer since the 90s.
And I feel I'm not alone. I bet there are millions of people who would be printer customers if printer ink weren't the most artificially expensive substance on the planet.
If I could go out and buy a printer replacement ink pack for $5.00 and have it last a few months, I'd just buy them regularly. Instead I haven't paid one dime in close to 25 years. Gee, guess that financial decision paid off for them....
The solution is to just buy a cheap Brother mono laser printer.
for bonus points get a used one!
SoleInvictusIf you're extra lucky, it'll still be running on the original included demo toner cartridge.
I have a brother multifuction laser. From a thrift store. 6 years so far on a 3rd party XL toner...
I've spent more on paper than the printer+toner
You might want to look at laser printers. If you're just doing black and white documents, whatever the latest Brother printer is will do a good job, do it fast, and not screech at you about your cyan running out.
It's a few hundred bucks up front, but the toner cartridges print a ton of pages and don't dry out if you don't use them. I can't recommend it enough if you have even a passing desire to make hard copies of documents.
This. I have a brother color laser printer I bought years ago. Literally before COVID happened, so I've had it about 6 years. I replaced the black stock toner, haven't replaced any others yet. Thing still prints like a champ even though it'll randomly forget Wi-Fi settings.... Lol
I bought an HP* color laser before Covid too. It's starting to bitch about cyan, but holy hell I abused the shit out of it during my studies and it's still good as new.
*I know, but their enterprise grade stuff is actually decent.
The only downside is up replaces the entire toner and drum cartridge. I prefer brother since they're separate. Drum is now expensive, but I doubt I'll ever use it enough to need a new drum lol.
Agreed, I have a (pre-HP) Samsung laser printer and it works whenever I need it to. Sure, it only works via USB and only has one button and an on/off switch, but it works when needed.
it only works via USB and only has one button and an on/off switch, but it works when needed
That's ideal; the less connected it is, the less chance I'll have to shoot it
noughtnautI went directly from a dot matrix (ImageWriter II ftw!) to a laser. Except for photo prints, I find it immensely practical to be able to print stuff at home.
Nowadays you have tank printers. They're more expensive upfront but the ink is much cheaper. It's even cheaper if you go for aftermarket ink. I have an Epson and it's great. Don't think I'll go with the cheap ink however, I just don't use it that much to justify the savings
garretbleAt this point if I have to print something I just go to the library. I’m fortunate, but it’s been like two years since I’ve had to print something on actual paper.
j4k3I have an HP laser printer from like 1992, before they turned to US=Privateers; rest-of-the-world=criminal pirates. HP died as a company when they spun off Agilent/Keysight as test equipment and continued the branding for contract manufactured consumer garbage. HP does not make anything. They market, place stickers on what others manufacture, and create ponzi scheme-like extortion scams, as the shriveled shell of a dying husk disconnected completely from their now long irrelevant past.
They died when inkjet ink became their core business the rest of the company revolved around.
Also Carly fiorina, she ruined it for women ceos for a while.
FauxPseudoI did IT for decades. I absolutely refuse to own a printer. I would rather drive to the library or UPS store on the rare occasion I need to print something than to have one of these gremlin habitats in my house.
Not that HP isn’t aware or not ticked off about this, mind. Recently they threatened to brick HP printers that use third-party cartridges if detected
Try that in EU.
I dare you. I double dare you.
Been looking for this sort of device for my Pantech laser.
The cartridge is good for 1,600 pages - no more, no less.
All well and good, they’re cheap, except.. the vast majority of my printing is in A5 size (roughly half-letter, or exactly half-A4).
Those half pages count just like any other page against the total, and I get shorted by the better part of 800 pages or so.
I have a basic Brother monochrome laser for high volume. I can buy a compatible cartridge for 9€. An Epson A3+ (tabloid) inkjet for color and photos, not a real photo printer, only 4 inks. Compatible inks cost less than 3€.
A great option is to buy auto reset refillable carts, and refill with genuine epson eco tank ink, super cheap, and guarantees Epson quality
IsoKieroMy ecotank died just like all the other inkjets. It went few weeks without printing and blue nozzle dried completely up and on the pipes I can see dried up ink on other colors as well. So I had to dig up old Brother HL3040 back to the duty which I retired after print quality started to drop (it needs new fuse unit or something similar, so not that big of a deal) and I thought having an option to print nice color pictures would be nice.
So, if you plan to run ecotank (which does have pretty good printing quality when it works) set up a scheduled task on your computer to print something, in color, quite frequently even if it wastes some ink and paper. I think the main issue with mine was that even if I print stuff somewhat often there was a period where I only needed b&w documents so color nozzles went unused for a while.
I might get a new set of nozzles and ink tanks for my unit as it's a ton cheaper than a whole new printer, but if you're looking for a printer this is something to take into consideration, regardless of their marketing material.
Edit: Mine is Epson, didn't know that ecotank term is used by other manufacturers.
iturnedintoanewtI have a brother ecotank...i know this one will wake every noon and do some quick maintenance, like attempting a 10 second print. I guess it's exactly to avoid ink drying up.
QuarterSwedeIf you haven’t read the hackaday comments I highly recommend you do. Some really great behind the scenes experiences people are posting. Super cool.
DominusOfMegadeusGreat news for the population segment that was dumb enough to buy an HP printer in the last 20 years, yet is smart enough to perform this operation!
Kilgore TroutMy HP printer is 15 years old and we are not changing it until it breaks.
We are used to refill cartridges with a ink syringe.
I have a really old one that doesn't do part pairing and is new enough to do color so it's worth holding on to. The ink expiration, refill and status is still locked and it still can still brick specific ink cartridges if detects stuff like low ink or whatever. At least non-hp cartridges aren't all-out blocked. I might have to steal all the information in the post so I can build my own whatever that is before hp sues everyone involved and purges it from the internet.
Some day I hope I'll find a way to refill the cartridges with ink and hack them to reset the ink levels.
I have a rather old office laser from like 20 years ago and it is amazing. No DRM and I buy really cheap ink cartridges. The HP site does sell my cartridge still... For over $200.
They sure do seem to *really* hate their customers
If you buy whatever Brother laser printer, the ink doesn’t dry up and you never have to print anything anyway. It’s like $100 and the cartridge lasts forever.
And also; don’t print. If you’re a developer, put in the css that says:
@media print { body,html {display:none;} }
That might not completely do it because it’s a joke but slap !important or whatever wherever you want.
Brother invalidates its laser cartridges after a certain number of revolutions irrespective of how much toner is left. You used to be able to override this manually but they removed that in a software update recently. Am livid. If you know different do you mind sharing what model you have?
There is an official way to override this. In mine it’s pressing 7 times some button. I can’t
Remember what it’s called, but it’s in the manual. The mode essentially lets you print until the cartridge is empty
That's what I used to be able to do. It was pressing the back and cancel buttons in some combination brought up a hidden menu where you could reset the toner levels. You can still bring the menu up on mine but now it ignores any reset you do.
Disables print-as-pdf tho, could prevent some accessibility software too.
This is a good point. I obviously said the code was a joke but accessibility is something I was ignorant of early in my career when I was just trying to make the code work. Once I got some experience under my belt, I really focused on it as critical before shipping. And, surprisingly, I was always able to request extra funding for it.
Also, there’s easy tools to help you. I know VS Code has accessibility code linter extensions. I’m not as familiar with Xcode or others but I’d bet there’s something that at least treats it like a code warning if you do something that would make your web site gibberish to screen readers and the like.
We’re pretty much all gonna be disabled at some point. Some of us will piss off the mafia and be sank to the bottom a shallow sea while in our prime. But ideally, we all live to have vision problems or some other need for accessibility to exist.
why would I put that in the CSS??
It’s a joke, dog. It makes it so the page comes out white when printing. It’s not something anyone should actually put in their code.
yogurtwrongI mean if you are a pretentious asshole worried about stinky users stealing your precious content...
Seriously though.
Bought an old second-hand Brother printer a while ago and couldn't be happier.
Model is like 10 years old, yet all spare parts and cartridges as well as just toner are readily available and the printer is perfectly fine (damn how precise laser printers are!).
They just make it happen.
I was sold on laser the minute I had to print something after a month of not needing to and it just popped out before I could get to it (thanks for AirPrint/wifi printing). My old inkjet would’ve been dried up and had to be cleaned taking like 10 minutes and wasting paper. Yeah, laser is the only way to go.
We just print photos from Walgreens or Shutterfly if we need quality color photos. Super cheap and I don’t have to maintain the equipment. Although about the only photo printing we do these days is large for the wall on glass or canvas.
Our favorite photos are also displayed on our living room AppleTV’s screensaver. We just favorite them in the Photos app and they automatically show up. My parents are used to seeing our favorite photos from vacations when house sitting before we’ve even told them what attraction we’re doing. Best feature ever.
tbh i have a old hp printer sitting in the closet collecting dust we dont rlly need it anymore
Yeah I've been seeing knockoff and refilled Canon 245 cartridges for years now. Two things to worry about is:
Canon Firmware Updates can brick them
Some of their branding seems like grounds for lawsuit as they intentionally design their packages to look like Canon Brand. Just search 245 ink on walmart and you'll see tens of knockoffs with white and red boxes.
It's better to just do inktank printers tbh.
So never update my firmware then, got it.
I couldn't afford a Brother, but my Canon MG3620 works phenomenally with 3rd party ink. Another thing I like is that the software is delightfully stuck in the 90s. Simple and straightforward cause it literally hasn't changed since I was a kid. Yet you still get modern features like wireless and mobile printing, as well as borderless options. Everything I need a printer/scanner combo to do, and nothing more.
Idk why anybody with a pc would even connect them to wifi tbh.
So I can keep it in a central location since there's no food place for it in the office, and print being able to quickly print something from my phone is convenient (like a 4x6 photo from my phone to give to a visiting family member on the spot).
FWIW you can always disable wifi if you don't need it.
[…] inkjet throws another vague error when all you want is to just print a text document.
If that's your usecase, it's cheaper (and greener) to save as pdf.
Great option if you already have one. For everyone else. Don't buy HP.
Also, don't buy inkjet.
My first inkjet was an HP bubblejet, about 1994. My last was some garbage about 2000. Since then I've refused to own one.
My *1997* laserjet (that I bought used in 2008) just died. I bougt a color laser on Craigslist for $50. And my current BW laser is a 2014 HP, that just got it's second cartridge.
You can't give me an inkjet.
They actually make their money by having the printer be more expensive but it saves you in the long-run
My HP is good, but it's one of the liquid ink ones instead of cartridges. Got for PPS support so I new it would just print things on my network.
Wish I had a open source option though. And or at least a manufacturer that was possibly using slave labor (made in China and all that).
Fuck HP.
It's not just HP
Fuck printers.
Just make sure to wash the toner off after.
It's not just printers.
Man, don't get me started on razor blades, coffee machines, video game console, electric toothbrushes and e-readers...!
Straight razors- bought a pack of blades years ago for change and have yet to run out
Aeropress or V60- especially with beans, after an initial investment of ~£100, you can buy the cheapest beans in bulk (freeze to last) and still make better coffee than any shop
Not using consoles
Oh god, what's the issue with toothbrushes?
Switched to Kobo Forma when kindle got ads, love it
Get a safety razor. I got one a few years ago and it's been amazing. The blades are much sharper (or at least feel that way) than the modern 4/5/6 bladed thingies, last longer, and are like 20€ for a 50-pack.
I bet there's some hentai out there that exists that covers this
You can have my Brother laser printer when you pry it from my cold dead hands, and because it's not an HP, I'm sure it will still work when you do.
Just read a review on Amazon today about a newer brother printer that they've instituted a lock out on toner. Was telling a colleague that they were decent enough to not do that... But then I ate my words
Well, they can go fuck themselves.
I've been a victim of this. It's true.
Lol, so true!
Remember when HP made great printers? I still have an old HP Laserjet 1100 in use. When that one dies, I don't think I'll be buying any other printer.
I member
Anyone else use the unauthenticated web interface on these to put rude messages on the display? Good times.
I've had the same HP printer since around 2016? Don't use it much, but it comes in handy when it's needed. First time I ran out of ink I shopped around for the best deal and ended up with some other ink brand. Dumb me decided to update the printer when I got the ink. Boom it denied me the ability to use it now... it took me a few hours of trying to find exactly how to downgrade the firmware back to a previous version so I can use the dam ink I brought! I was thrilled when that worked. I then set it's IP to static and removed the gateway. Now, no matter what it can't reach home and know it needs an update at all. I almost can't wait till the day this stops working so I can invest my money into whatever few brands that don't screw you.
Laser is your long term answer. Brother seems to be the brand today.
Those eco tank printers seem alright
Not sure about the Eco tank line, but the smart tank line botched the IPP interface. Ink level reporting is always wrong and printer status is regularly wrong. Exposed settings are limited to push people to the app.
I had to mess around with my ET and compile a driver (nothing pre-packaged for aarch64) in order to get CUPS to play nice with it. The network implementation is garbage so, it's been nice having a pi print server.
That's way more work than it should be. Well played, though
I wonder how much more it would cost to just donate or throw away your printer every time it runs out of ink and buy a new one. Printers are sold at a major loss to lock you into their ink. It might be worth the expense to know your costing these pricks money.
I have an old model that is incompatible with the subscription service… suck shit HP