I hope this goes without saying but please do not run this on machines you don’t own.

The good news:

  • the exploit seems to require user action

The bad news:

  • Device Firewalls are ineffective against this

  • if someone created a malicious printer on a local network like a library they could create serious issues

  • it is hard to patch without breaking printing

  • it is very easy to create printers that look legit

  • even if you don’t hit print the cups user agent can reveal lots of information. This may be blocked at the Firewall

TLDR: you should be careful hitting print

  • @pHr34kY
    link
    52 hours ago

    CUPS facing the public internet sounds a bit crazy. Why would you print when not physicly near the printer?

    • @subtext
      link
      17 minutes ago

      I think this would likely be most troublesome on some of the OG internet users that got a whole freaking /8, /10, or /12 or something like AT&T or universities. Up until very recently, and possibly even to the present, these organizations had such large IPv4 space, that there was no need to do NAT, and each device had a publicly addressable IP.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assigned_/8_IPv4_address_blocks