Your Office’s Fax Machines Might Be The New Target For Attackers

Nothing can be less intimidating than the old office fax device. That is exactly why it is employed as a backdoor for attackers to get into a company’s network. A cybersecurity company in Israel, Check Point, claimed this week that their study found security errors in millions of fax devices.

The hack operates by sending a picture via the phone line (or a file that the fax device believes is a picture) and that is coded to comprise the malicious virus. When a firm gets the image, the picture is uploaded and decoded into the memory of fax-printer, permitting the attackers to take over the machine and distributing the nasty code via the network.

“Many firms might not even be aware that they have a fax device linked to their system, but fax machine is built into many home printers and multifunction office,” claimed group manager at Check Point for security research, Yaniv Balmas, to the media in an interview.

The scientists aimed on HP’s all-in-one OfficeJet Pro fax printers (the worldwide market dominator for fax devices). HP swiftly fixed the bug. A patch is accessible on their support page. But the same errors are present in most fax devices, comprising those by Epson and Canon.

On a related note, researchers earlier this week claimed that Samsung’s Galaxy S7 handsets have a microchip security error. The error was revealed earlier this year and put millions of smartphones at risk to attackers aiming to spy on their consumers, claimed researchers to the media in an interview.

The Galaxy S7 and other handsets manufactured by Samsung Electronics were earlier thought to be resistant to a security flaw dubbed as Meltdown, which scientists claimed impacted most of the world’s smartphones, PCs, and other computing gadgets. Researchers have now found a way to exploit the Meltdown flaw to hack Galaxy S7 smartphones.