Printers open to the Internet at BU start spitting out anti-Semitic crap

By adamg on Wed, 02/01/2017 - 10:47am

The Daily Free Press reports neo-Nazis are having fun trolling for printers accessible over the Internet - and have found a bunch at Boston University that they used to spit out anti-Semitic flyers.

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Boston University

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Comments

Silly Nazis!

By Cappy
Wed, 02/01/2017 - 11:17am

Those printers are for kids!

Recurring problem

By Michael
Wed, 02/01/2017 - 11:24am

It's happening at the White House, too, but they're pretty sure that it's just Steve Bannon printing something out to take to the can with him.

Probably not "neo-Nazis"

By anon
Wed, 02/01/2017 - 11:41am

Probably not "neo-Nazis" promoting white supremacy. My guess is drunk MIT nerds telling BU sysadmins to firewall their shit.

If this is the message they

By Mediacrity
Wed, 02/01/2017 - 12:52pm

If this is the message they choose to make their point, I'm fine calling them neo-Nazis now.

spreading hate is not college hijinks

By anon
Wed, 02/01/2017 - 1:12pm

Please don't minimize this

I'd like to think MIT kids

By anon
Wed, 02/01/2017 - 1:30pm

I'd like to think MIT kids could be more clever and less morally vacuous.

and the BC kids are busy printing

By bulgingbuick
Wed, 02/01/2017 - 3:41pm

their bookies, er.. statistics papers.

Or 4chan types doing it for

By anon
Thu, 02/02/2017 - 6:43pm

Or 4chan types doing it for teh lulz and picking whatever they know will shock people the most. And of course the fact that this is getting news coverage means it worked.

It's amazing how many commercial printers (among other devices) are still being designed with the mindset that only good people will have network access to the machine. Many models don't even allow for basic firewall rules, let alone more complex authentication.

Anyone who's been around universities knows bogus/spam networked print jobs are a problem that's been happening for the better part of the last 15-20 years. It's the modern version of the spam faxes every business would get.

Northeastern Printers

By Nate
Wed, 02/01/2017 - 11:56am

Northeastern has a nice system requiring authentication (ID card swipe at the printer) to actually print out any remote job. I always thought it was a nice solution to save paper after accidentally printing to the wrong building or realizing your pdf was 150 pages. Turns out it would also be a nice solution to rogue nazi propaganda.

Lower Level

By BostonDog
Wed, 02/01/2017 - 12:08pm

The problem is the printers will output a job sent directly to it's IP address which is how the printer server at Northeastern communicates with it. All you need is the IP address and the protocols the printer supports and both can be determined in a matter of minutes with the right tools.

There are easy technical solutions to this but they require additional configuration on the printer itself. Oftentimes a busy IT admin will forget this step or the printer will get reset to factory settings unknowingly. Most home and small office printers are connected to a NAT network so people from elsewhere on the internet don't have direct access which is why this problem mostly occurs at universities.

About 10 years ago companies which made consumer routers got wise to the security risks and started shipping these units in a somewhat protected state out of the box. Printer makers apparently haven't gotten the memo.

Firewalls

By cybah
Wed, 02/01/2017 - 2:00pm

for many years you gave printers public addresses.. back before firewalls. Schools are always hesitant firewall off their networks due to open internets and free speech issues. And for as long as I can remember, even dorm computers got public addresses (no firewall). Not surprising.

This is more lazy admins who don't wanna look at industrial firewalls for this stuff, or segment their networks off better.

Why?

By Lecil
Wed, 02/01/2017 - 11:54am

No, seriously, why bother? Do they think that if only people would randomly and accidentally come across their propaganda they'll suddenly see the light and convert? They'll never believe a flyer handed to them by an actual person, but finding one on the printer will convince them?

Ah, there's my answer. Cowards.

That, or they figure "Heck, might as well admit I'm an irredeemable asshat, might as well be asshattery about other peoples property too!"

It's not to convert, it's a

By Mediacrity
Wed, 02/01/2017 - 12:46pm

It's not to convert, it's a scattershot to make anyone who comes across it feel marginalized, alone, and afraid.

in other words, terrorism

By anon
Wed, 02/01/2017 - 1:14pm

you can't run, you can't hide is the message

Why doesn't this have a trump

By bostonbob235
Wed, 02/01/2017 - 1:11pm

Why doesn't this have a trump land ma headline.

Because I'm a flaming lefty with a heart

By adamg
Wed, 02/01/2017 - 1:28pm

I'd hate to offend those rare Nazis out there who don't support Trump and who have been pulling this sort of thing going back to the days when Dear Leader was just a reality-show buffoon and serial bankruptcy-court visitor. Now if the printouts had mentioned something about the wall or immigrants or something, that'd be different, but no, it was just your generic Nazi stuff.