Or any HP printers. Their laserjets used to be bulletproof, at least the office sized one. Used to easily get over a million prints out of them with just replacing toner carts and maintenance kits (pickup rollers and fuser). The last ones I bought around 2018 were flimsy toys designed to break early and need replacement. Now with their push for printer subscriptions, I wouldn't take an HP printer if you gave it to me.
@@snaredude56 That is a shame. I can understand price points on consumer inkjets but to trash the laserjets... Looks like I will recommend Brother for all medium duty needs.
I found a fix for the problem - yesterday I dropped off my 3 inkjet printers at the recycling center. most of my printing is monochrome so I bought the cheapest laser printer I could find, I shopped backward, I researched who made the cheapest toner cartridges and bought the matching printer (a $120 Brother printer)
@@yorinov2001 laser printers are certainly cheaper on a per page basis The problem I have with them is that I only print occasionally and the laser printers takes a long time to warm up the toner cartridge before it can print. But if you set them to keep the toner cartridge warm all the time it uses a whole bunch of electricity.
Honestly unless you print a lot ink jet cost more because they dry out before you can get through all the ink. And if you absolutely have to have inkjet cannon makes a printer that lets you refill individual reservoirs. It's a little more expensive but not that much so I don't understand why anyone would buy anything else
@@summetj Its exactly the other way around. If you only print occasionally, then laser printer is the only way to go. Laser can be turned off almost indefinitely and will still be perfectly good when you use it (keep it covered to keep the dust out). Only takes 30 seconds to warm up a laser printer. Refilling laser cartridge is also cheap and easy, and once refilled its good for another 1500 or more pages.
@@GNXClone I really like the refillable ink model that Epson uses. However has a long time Linux user I've found HP has the best Linux support for printers and scanners.
I had a refillable Epson. Guess what? It also has an ink counter, but instead of being on the cartridge, it is on the printer itself. And when it reaches a certain value, it won't let you print (for instance, if you clean your nozzles a lot, it the counter will rapidly reach that value)!! Also, I didn't even get to use all the first batch of ink and the nozzles clogged. I returned to use a HP printer, because the Epson was unusable at this point.
My HP printer went out on the curb years ago when it wouldn't print my all-black resume because the light cyan ink had *expired* ... not run out. It was just not fresh anymore. I use a Brother laser printer now. I've never had to buy toner for it. I got a new cartridge when I bought it but the original one hasn't run out yet.
I think eventually, hobbyists will offer modchips for printers.. to make them accept 3rd-party cartridges, just like they've done on game consoles since the late 1980's.
I don't think so. The tech has been there for years. Both capable enough cheap microcontrollers AND "evil" printers. The market has been there for years. If I were a hobbyist, I would rather design that flex PCB I could sell in higher quantities to the ink refillers than a modchip to the actual printer owners who buy it just one time.
There's a website where you can buy new firmware for a popular high end Epson printer that removes the OEM cartridge check. Only a matter of time until some smart person figures out how to use AI to do this same task.
I fixed mine by throwing it in the garbage and buying an laserjet printer from another manufacture. Works great. I might print 35 pages in a year. No more cartridges drying up due to low usage. Powder lasts along time.
The efforts HP goes to in order to ensure its customers use only genuine hp ink cartridges is going to run them out of business in the inkjet printer market. This video really shows how much “genuine HP ink” is ripping you off when it’s still profitable to do this.
Brother, which used to have printers wich used cartridges without chips, reasonably priced ink cartridges and absolute bargain bin compatibles (because no chip needed) started doing this chip bullshit too some years back, found out the hard way when our workhorse Brother failed and bought a new one without checking. I think the worst I saw was an Epson that refused to use brand-name new old stock cartridges because they were old.
They ALL do it ( I'm in the industry!) BUT there's a reason. . The inks and toners are carefully matched and you CAN chase damage to components using "Non-OEM" supplies. . Your choice.
@@rogerstarkey5390 All compatible cartridges use aniline dyes for the ink. Even black is made with a mix of the colors. Brand name often uses pigments for at least the black, which makes for a deeper black but CLOGS THE FUCKING PRINTHEADS. Compatible toners are also matched to the printers. And all toner is is colored wax particles. The worst you can get is having to clean the drum and a failed print.
@@rogerstarkey5390lies....bought expensive over price HP ink cartridges from Best Buys and the stupid printer still says not genuine. All three of them. Got a refillable ink printer. Never going back to HP.
Everybody needs to buy "Ink Tank" printers. I got one 5 years ago, yes it cost about double, but you literally just buy bottle of ink and squirt in. 3rd party ink, no problem.
Don’t get me wrong, I really do like mine, but you still have to buy a maintenance cartridge for the times you inevitably have to do an ink flush (Pixma G620)
We bought an HP printer last year and it printed exactly 5 pages total. It ran out of color and wouldn't even print in only black and the replacement cartridge INCLUDED wouldn't work because it was DRY. The replacement cartridges were priced at $70-$85 . We gave the printer to a thrift store and bought a CANON printer that takes bottles of ink and will print approximately 5000 pages before we have to refill it with the bottles that are INCLUDED. Extra bottles are around $20. Well never buy another "Cartridge" printer again.
You will never print that many pages because the canon is designed to destroy itself by flooding the bottom of the chassis with massive amounts of waste ink. There's a pad just shoved down there and once it's flooded itself enough it's permanently bricked.
@@superslash7254 Well it's been REALLY GOOD so far. The price of the Canon with extra ink was just a few bucks more than the cartridge replacements for the HP so even if it doesn't last long it has saved me money. If it "Bricks" then I will use the leftover ink to make paintings. The Canon is also extremely easy to connect to our devices. The HP was a nightmare that we had to fight with to connect anything AND the ink cartridges are very expensive.
@@rgarito The starts cartridge only has enough ink to get the printer set up. But the real cartridge that came with it was dry. We bought the Canon printer that takes bottles and haven't had one single problem. We don't actually print that much but when we do it is really handy for the printer to Actually work.
@@rgarito There is a video that shows a guy opening a printer cartridge . the inside is mostly empty space except for a VERY small piece of cotton with what would probably be 10-15 DROPS of ink in it. And they sell THAT for $70-$85 . That is definitely a rip off / SCAM.
Once upon a time HP was a quality company. My large CAD drawings were produced by an HP Printer. Those days are long gone. Basically you're buying a plastic box with software that limits you to HP ink cartridges and nothing else. I bought a brand new HP printer for tabloid printing. After 3 months I solved the ink cartridge issue by taking it to the recycling center. Goodbye HP.
When you only print one or two dozen pages per year ( most years less), and your printer fails due to ink subscription schemes, then you may feel like catapulting the piece of junk through the corporate office doors. I settled for never buying a HP printer again.
Pretty crazy that it's still profitable to sell the refilled cartridge having paid for a custom flexible circuit board and IC. What is the IC? Were you able to identify? One of those Chinese unbranded MCs that are available for a few cents?
I guess either an ASIC (as that's a pretty high volume product), or (more likely) something like an ATTINY (clone?). Would be interesting to try and read the firmware back
@@relativenormality not sure if it's that easy to do this. If I were working at HP and my boss told me "make sure nobody can manufacture fake cartridges", I would have designed the protocol so it can't be intercepted. Encrypt that data. Encrypt it not with a fixed key, but a key based on the printer serial. Make some public key authentication. Something like that. Maybe they were lazy and used just a static key so the data sent is encrypted, but if that same data gets replayed, it still works.
Yeah if it’s fully encrypted it’s going to be very difficult to hack, but not impossible. Decapping the chip and reading its internal memory registers is probably doable, though I doubt the remanufacturers have done this. A simpler method would be to just have each cartridge have a unique ID, and have the printer record how much ink it has extracted from each ID. Maybe the printer even checks if that ID has been activated from the store with an online connection. The spoof chip would then just need to swap its ID once, or multiple times for a user-refillable cartridge.
I’ve wondered about this for years. The ink is pretty generic and wrapped in a specialized cartridge with a small circuit. I’m impressed that so much work went into hacking the cartridge and making it work again. I’m more impressed that a profitable business can be built around it.
And that's why in the future a internet connection for your printer will be mandatory. Because we check every effing cartridge against our database, and our database will tell you if you have ink left. OR we charge you a premium for the automatic replacement in the mail. (Hint: it already left the building)
People are working on open source printers for this reason, I hope we get there soon. I'd rather take my 3D printer and print off the bulk, buy some bits online, and assemble it myself then pay $80 for a couple oz of ink.
To a degree this is happening. We've come across HP printers in the field that if they don't have an Internet connection within a certain period of time, they stop printing altogether until you connect it to one. From a security standpoint this is a terrible idea. We can't manage these printers to the degree we can a PC, so ideally they wouldn't be Internet connected since they're sitting on the LAN for people to use. We need a company to start building open source inkjet printers a la the consumer 3D printing industry.
@@Pharozos The tracking dots are required by law for any "consumer printer". And if you don't print via printing press it is classified as a consumer printer. They even show up on unprocessed scans. That's 90% of time how they get you if published something you shouldn't, like classified material you photocopied. Yes photocopier do that too.
@@DerSolinskiit was intended for the purpose, but I doubt it's that effective. They might know where and roughly when it's been purchased (country, city, maybe even the store) - but that's where the trace ends. Maybe - if the driver is a data hoarding sniffling piece of crap - which might very well be - it will send telemetric data to the manufacturer servers, including the serial - in that case they might be able to get the IP - and therefore the ISP customer. But for that the whole information chain has to work perfectly. I guess most illegal copies are detected in different manners. But it's an option and it could indeed work (and has worked). It's even more useful (and that is absolutely very reasonable) to restore shredded pieces of paper.
Laser, the best printers for "i maybe print one a month" and "i print all the time" The toner doesn't go "bad" if left for months at a time and toner carts can be had for cheap
Okidata made a laser printer in the 90s with a refillable tube for toner. I bought a big bottle of toner for $20. I'm almost ready to buy another bottle . And I used that printer daily. I'm looking for them used on eBay but you would be a fool to sell it.. They can make a cheap printer that lasts decades and uses cheap toner. They choose not to.
@@stevetheborg I used the 3si for a decade That was back when hp made good printers. Now they make garbage designed to make you constantly buy absurdly priced ink that seems to have less shelf life than milk in the sun.
I used to use a cheap printer with a cheap CISS attached which worked fabulously most of the time. Costs to run it were miniscule compared to cartirdges. After about a decade I finally bought an Epson refillable tank printer. It is amazing, reliable and high quality. It cost a chunk to buy originally but I have saved that many times over in ink costs. I am still using the original ink three years after first use. Epson ET-8500. Love it!
We used to do something similar for iPhones to get around carrier locking. But yeah they were man in the middle circuit boards for your iPhone so you could get it working on T-Mobile or overseas.
After having to replace the yellow cartridge for the 4th time in a year after having NEVER printed color I went full "Office Space" on my epson 510. Ispiked that thing into the concrete like I had just run the winning touchdown in the Superbowl. I viewed them and there I will never waste another second of my life with an inkjet printer. Bought a laser printer on sale and 6 years later it's working perfectly and has never once refused to print.
Ah, seems like yellow was being used for page tracking dots 🤔 I remember this issue on my last inkjet printer 😂 The benefit of laser is that it doesn't use toner to track documents!
Lot of good comments so far. Let me add my experience. When my old system died, my old HP would not install on the new system. Couldn't find a driver anywhere. All I wanted was a SCANNER. Bought a new cheap HP 2700. It won't even SCAN when a cartridge is out of ink!
I worked in HP inkjet printhead and cartridge R&D and manufacturing for ten years. They used to be great- I won't by HP products with other people's money now.
Never would I buy another HP printer. Regional restrictions, not allowing 3rd party cartridges and faulty detection of their own cartridges. Bought Brother printers and never looked back.
Odd thing is, Im currently on a plan of $1.49 a month for ink and SURPRISE it lasts at least a year before "running out". When HP has to foot the bill, they make sure you squeeze every drop out. I purposely change the cartridge before I'm supposed to, cause I'm petty like that. However, I'd love to get my hands on one of these guys!
HP will assign 80% of their printer engineering staff to precluding this vulnerability in the future; no matter the cost. Unfortunately, the new cartridges will therefore be $99.99 each next year to pay for all this DRM enforced monopoly. People buy into this sort of Apple-like scheme, so I guess they like it.
I fixed the problem of printing a year ago when I switched to a Canon all in one color laser. The cartridges it came with lasted well even though they were just starter cartridges. Then I invested in a full set of genuine Canon cartridges. I used inkjet for years buying supplies from Carrot ink here in Texas but I finally gave up on inkjet. Color laser technology is now at least affordable for the machine and less expensive and troublesome to operate.
Part of the info burned into the internal HP chip is date of birth which is used (along with date of install) to calculate expiry date. HP assumes it won’t be reliable, even if it’s still half full, after 5 years from birth or 3 years from install (not exact but close enough, it’s a weird formula). It’s plenty of time and avoids whiners that are dissatisfied with their print quality from ancient dry or gummy cartridge spray nozzles. Refill chips alter the birth and expiry info along with the amount of ink remaining. That’s about it, had to be done.
It's not an attack...it's a workaround to save money. I do understand the analogy...but I expected a detructive MIM attack using a cartridge from the title.
In computer science terminology software or hardware that has been devised with the intention of defeating a security system would be termed an attack, even if the real-world objective is to defeat profiteering by manufacturers and so not considered nefarious by anyone other than those companies
I wouldn't call this an "attack". It's an old technique for adjusting digital information. I believe this is the same process some car performance "chips" adjust the spark and fuel and boost levels when the engine computer is locked.
The patch gives the ink levels in the printer so the customer does not have an empty ink message every time they print, HP then aggressively update firmware to block this patch. TURN OFF AUTO FIRMWARE UPDATES IS THE KEY or don't purchase a HP Printer.
A few years back there was a movie called Paycheck, about a reverse engineer, Ben Afflick, that disabled a time machine with a similar device that he referred to as a 'switch' Clear laminate over a vital part of one board in a 30+ frame. This person probably took a bit of coaching from this. A word of advice ... every update you accept and install, brings you one step closer to this scenario,
All these printer companies making their printers really cheap to lure you in like some drug dealer on a dark and dodgy street corner to hook you on their product and then lock you in to their overpriced 'fix'. Scummy sums it up best.
So, it makes you wonder why the printer has the additional contacts that make this work. From what I can see in the video, the flexboard doesnt just sit in between existing contacts, it connects to ones the genuine flexboard does not have. Those contacts are probably used during manufacturing to do this very thing... bypass the DRM and let the test the printer. In fact, I would guess that this design/idea came from someone who works for HP. Not that there's anything wrong with that, I just find it funny that not even HP want to deal with their DRM.
Its gone much further than this. If you really want to, you can layer a chip underneath a LED, and you will never know unless you take off every led to look for it. All it needs a high heat tolerance. I can imagine in the near future someone will make a 1TB storage device with a wireless transmitter that will easily fit and be powered under a traditional LED (if it isn't already done) Some flash storage actually works better under high heat.
This is the same way that the first iPhones were "unlocked" to work with carriers that they weren't launched on yet. There was a tiny interposer that lied about which carrier the sim card was for.
HP charges not by the ink level, but by how many times the cartridge is used and worse, by how long it has been installed. Each time the printer interfaces with the IC on the OEM cartridge, historical data gets read and new info gets written to non-volatile memory. Obviously the IC on the remanufactured cartridge exists to spoof the printer into thinking that the cartridge is genuine.
Man we used to simply pull the empty cartridge out, refill the cartridge with ink, delete the printer app, reinstall the printer app, install the refilled ink cartridge. We never bought any cartridges except for what came with the printer when it was new. That was in early 2000s, haven't needed a printer for years/decade. Anyway, just delete the printer app and reinstall it.
I'm still using an HP all-in-one, because I usually don't want to fire up my high-end scanner when the HP works good enough for most purposes. Otherwise, I'm using a cheap Brother laser printer that cost less than the two HP ink carts. (I picked up the Brother about 5 years ago for $80 when it went on sale on Amazon.) I find I really don't need color...
I'm really surprised no one has started their own small "open source" printer company. I would think that someone could make a small fortune just building small black and white ink jet printers.
I thought the same I want to see a similar approach to Car Interface OS's rather than seeing those cheap clones that use older Android chips and sucks using them for anything other than basic FM radio and TH-cam and Bluetooth
The cartridges dont have a level sensor, they have a page counter. The logical thing this chip does would be that it communicates a lower nunber of pages printed than is true.
I wouldn't call it a man in the middle attack at all as there is no malicious code being sent to your computer, this is in place to ensure that your printer recognizes the cartridge as a valid ink cartridge. Aftermarket has been doing this for years already to bypass cartridge restrictions. Both ink and laser. In the early days of this it was simply serial numbers hard coded to an add-on wafer external to the cartridge-being an in-house repair shop with lots of printers in use we'd keep the old wafers and reuse them to get every bit of use out of a cartridge. Just keep track of them and cycle them in sequence (printer would remember X number of previous cartridges).
I refilled ink in HP for years. Until I realized that HP will waste your Expensive ink. It literally wastes the ink in cleaning cycles. I have Brother printers now, which I like alot better.
It's probably changing the expiration of the cartridge. They're often good for just a year. I have a box full of never used but expired carts. If I put it in the printer it won't let me use them.
I got tired of the expensive cartridge issues and the poor connectivity of my old HO printer and replaced a still functional HP printer with a Epson tank printer. I don't have to deal with HP cartridges or connectivity ever again. 😊
Like others have said in here laser is the way to go. Toner can sit in my printer for 5 years, when I go to print I don’t care if it takes 90 seconds to warm up, but it’s definitely gonna print just fine.
Didn't Seiko lose a court battle about this same thing with large format printers a long time ago already? I'm still rocking a Lexmark E321 laser from the beginning part of the 2000's with a 6000 page cartridge which has lasted for over a decade now as I print very seldomly. I like the fact that I can just take the printer from the closet, turn it on, insert paper, print, put it back in the closet waiting for another few months until I need to print again. I calculated that with this pace of printing the current cartridge will run out around 2045.
I recall that 30 years ago, they had these devices called "Dongles" that had to be plugged into the back of PCs for certain high-dollar software packages to run. The story I heard was that they were named after someone named Don Gall, so that is where the name came from, but probably apocryphal.
@@johnsa3567it's still used to this day. I'd usually encountered these dongles, "security dongles", on arcade cabinets where games would not load if it is not present
@@johnsa3567 engineering software as well, CNC controllers too or such. Heck I've seen the Sega arcade boards that are PC based (the ALLS for example) have a USB slot for that key chip too. The hardware itself you plug into already identifies itself as a security token only and that's it.
Best thing i ever did with my old hp printers was replacing them with epson ecotank printers. i can easily refill them any time I please with any old bottles of ink.
I've been using re-cycled cartridges since forever at a fraction of the cost of the original propriety ones and have never had one single issue with them. It's interesting how printer manufacturers have steadily increased the complexity of protection on their products and how this has been steadily circumvented.
@@mikethespike7579 in the case of this specific cartridge, it worked just fine, but the Ink would "spread" just a little bit more than the genuine HP ink, so all of my text would look just slightly more "Bold" than was "normal". Not a serious issue, but still a detectable difference.
The real issue is the nonstop attempt by manufacturers to squeeze every last dime out of the supply chain they can. They figure that MOST customers will grumble but never take the step of trying to get around their nonsense. They also know that in the big picture, they will lose a few customers, but will retain most of them because they have "invested" in their physical printers, so the customers figure it's not worth their effort to fight it so they will pay up with their extortion. The big companies don't really care if they piss off a few, as long as the net revenue keeps going up. It's a really sad commentary about modern company integrity and trust.
I stick with Epson. I have zero issues with refilled/reman/non-genuine carts and all i have to do is occasionally clean out the waste ink tank and do a factory reset and it's all good again. Canon and HP can go suck balls as far as i'm concerned!
So where can I get some of these? My job made me buy HP printer. I rarely need to use it but the fact I can no longer print out one page as needed is beyond maddening.
The fact it was worth someone's time and expertise to reverse engineer these chips, design and manufacture a man in the middle exploit and then sell it no doubt still at a profit shows just how disgustingly overpriced printer ink still is
i was given a "printer" that i cant even get the software for... one of those UV resin things for doing the phone covers and credit cards... cant say ive found any open source stuff for it either... iunno. better off hacking it up and making a router from it... beefy enough! weighs about 100kg... reminding me, i fired up my resin 3d printer last night, and yeah... that softwares pretty "locked down" as well... all "cloud server" and "no connection found" nonsense. i just wanna print this simply little bracket! ffs! *fires up milling machine and makes said part in about the same time software takes to simply slice file without teh smell or mess of UV resin*
did it for years with an old Epsom printer, just pried off original and replaced with hacked/purchased chip... I paid $5 for altered firmware for my current Brother laser printer; the printer now thinks it is ALWAYS full, allowing me to refill the toner as many times as i like! down side, i dont get advanced warning when the toner is low... a filled cartridge lasts for thousands of pages so it worth it
I have simple solution...don't buy HP! There so many other printer manufacturer to choose from. Why choose the expensive HP for the same/better performance that is out to ruining you financially?
Friends don't let friends buy HP Inkjet Printers...
fr fr
Or any HP printers. Their laserjets used to be bulletproof, at least the office sized one. Used to easily get over a million prints out of them with just replacing toner carts and maintenance kits (pickup rollers and fuser). The last ones I bought around 2018 were flimsy toys designed to break early and need replacement. Now with their push for printer subscriptions, I wouldn't take an HP printer if you gave it to me.
@@snaredude56 That is a shame. I can understand price points on consumer inkjets but to trash the laserjets... Looks like I will recommend Brother for all medium duty needs.
@@doogie812I've had my experiences with brother and I switched back to HP. Good luck to me.
Had to have a intervention when my cousin subscribed to hp ink for both his printers.
I found a fix for the problem - yesterday I dropped off my 3 inkjet printers at the recycling center. most of my printing is monochrome so I bought the cheapest laser printer I could find, I shopped backward, I researched who made the cheapest toner cartridges and bought the matching printer (a $120 Brother printer)
@@yorinov2001 laser printers are certainly cheaper on a per page basis The problem I have with them is that I only print occasionally and the laser printers takes a long time to warm up the toner cartridge before it can print. But if you set them to keep the toner cartridge warm all the time it uses a whole bunch of electricity.
Honestly unless you print a lot ink jet cost more because they dry out before you can get through all the ink. And if you absolutely have to have inkjet cannon makes a printer that lets you refill individual reservoirs. It's a little more expensive but not that much so I don't understand why anyone would buy anything else
@@jeremygregorio7472 Additional, with any power on ink printer sinks amount of inks out for nozzle cleaning as waste.
We had a inkjet, and a lazer one at home, that lazer one always worked, the inkjet was always the most annoying piece of hardware id ever met.
@@summetj Its exactly the other way around. If you only print occasionally, then laser printer is the only way to go. Laser can be turned off almost indefinitely and will still be perfectly good when you use it (keep it covered to keep the dust out). Only takes 30 seconds to warm up a laser printer. Refilling laser cartridge is also cheap and easy, and once refilled its good for another 1500 or more pages.
It's not a man-in-the-middle attack. It's a friend-in-the-middle helping out.
because of their - in my opinion - dubious business practice, that company has been non existent to me for more than 10 years.
I bought a HP laser earlier this year, wanted to vomit during the purchase... But did it anyway. Linux driver issue made the decision
This practice is done by all the major printer manufacturers. Consumables is where they make their profit. I used to work in this industry!!
The next time I need to purchase a printer, it will not be an HP. More likely the refillable Epson.
@@GNXClone I really like the refillable ink model that Epson uses. However has a long time Linux user I've found HP has the best Linux support for printers and scanners.
I’ll just go to a UPS store or a library. With bullshit like these cartridges no printer company is ever getting my money again.
I had a refillable Epson. Guess what? It also has an ink counter, but instead of being on the cartridge, it is on the printer itself. And when it reaches a certain value, it won't let you print (for instance, if you clean your nozzles a lot, it the counter will rapidly reach that value)!! Also, I didn't even get to use all the first batch of ink and the nozzles clogged. I returned to use a HP printer, because the Epson was unusable at this point.
The HP Smart Tank 515 and others of its series use refillable tanks.
The refillables destroy themselves after a while by flooding the bottom of their chassis with waste ink in massive quantities.
My HP printer went out on the curb years ago when it wouldn't print my all-black resume because the light cyan ink had *expired* ... not run out. It was just not fresh anymore.
I use a Brother laser printer now. I've never had to buy toner for it. I got a new cartridge when I bought it but the original one hasn't run out yet.
Mine wouldn't even let me SCAN when it ran out of one of 9 inks. Straight trash.
100% same experience.
I think eventually, hobbyists will offer modchips for printers.. to make them accept 3rd-party cartridges, just like they've done on game consoles since the late 1980's.
Seems easier than modifying every ink cartridge!
I don't think so.
The tech has been there for years.
Both capable enough cheap microcontrollers AND "evil" printers.
The market has been there for years.
If I were a hobbyist, I would rather design that flex PCB I could sell in higher quantities to the ink refillers than a modchip to the actual printer owners who buy it just one time.
There's a website where you can buy new firmware for a popular high end Epson printer that removes the OEM cartridge check. Only a matter of time until some smart person figures out how to use AI to do this same task.
What would be really wild if somebody modified the controllers that we use for 3-D printers to operate ink printers.
Beware of standing between a mega corporation and their profits. HP has legions of lawyers waiting for the chance to sue people doing these things.
I fixed mine by throwing it in the garbage and buying an laserjet printer from another manufacture. Works great. I might print 35 pages in a year. No more cartridges drying up due to low usage. Powder lasts along time.
The efforts HP goes to in order to ensure its customers use only genuine hp ink cartridges is going to run them out of business in the inkjet printer market.
This video really shows how much “genuine HP ink” is ripping you off when it’s still profitable to do this.
Brother, which used to have printers wich used cartridges without chips, reasonably priced ink cartridges and absolute bargain bin compatibles (because no chip needed) started doing this chip bullshit too some years back, found out the hard way when our workhorse Brother failed and bought a new one without checking.
I think the worst I saw was an Epson that refused to use brand-name new old stock cartridges because they were old.
They ALL do it ( I'm in the industry!)
BUT there's a reason.
.
The inks and toners are carefully matched and you CAN chase damage to components using "Non-OEM" supplies.
.
Your choice.
I despise HP’s trash anyway.
Canon and Brother are my choices.
@@rogerstarkey5390 All compatible cartridges use aniline dyes for the ink. Even black is made with a mix of the colors.
Brand name often uses pigments for at least the black, which makes for a deeper black but CLOGS THE FUCKING PRINTHEADS.
Compatible toners are also matched to the printers. And all toner is is colored wax particles. The worst you can get is having to clean the drum and a failed print.
@@rogerstarkey5390lies....bought expensive over price HP ink cartridges from Best Buys and the stupid printer still says not genuine. All three of them. Got a refillable ink printer. Never going back to HP.
Everybody needs to buy "Ink Tank" printers. I got one 5 years ago, yes it cost about double, but you literally just buy bottle of ink and squirt in. 3rd party ink, no problem.
Don’t get me wrong, I really do like mine, but you still have to buy a maintenance cartridge for the times you inevitably have to do an ink flush (Pixma G620)
@@mutestingray Never heard or had to do that on my Epson
@@mutestingrayit will probably still cost less than buying new hp ink cartridges.
Yes ive been looking at them
Will be my next printer. But wont be from hp. Im going with Shaq and get epson printer
We bought an HP printer last year and it printed exactly 5 pages total. It ran out of color and wouldn't even print in only black and the replacement cartridge INCLUDED wouldn't work because it was DRY. The replacement cartridges were priced at $70-$85 . We gave the printer to a thrift store and bought a CANON printer that takes bottles of ink and will print approximately 5000 pages before we have to refill it with the bottles that are INCLUDED. Extra bottles are around $20. Well never buy another "Cartridge" printer again.
You will never print that many pages because the canon is designed to destroy itself by flooding the bottom of the chassis with massive amounts of waste ink. There's a pad just shoved down there and once it's flooded itself enough it's permanently bricked.
@@superslash7254 Well it's been REALLY GOOD so far. The price of the Canon with extra ink was just a few bucks more than the cartridge replacements for the HP so even if it doesn't last long it has saved me money. If it "Bricks" then I will use the leftover ink to make paintings. The Canon is also extremely easy to connect to our devices. The HP was a nightmare that we had to fight with to connect anything AND the ink cartridges are very expensive.
New HP printers come with "Starter cartridges" which have very little ink, forcing you to purchase replacement cartridges shortly thereafter.
@@rgarito The starts cartridge only has enough ink to get the printer set up. But the real cartridge that came with it was dry. We bought the Canon printer that takes bottles and haven't had one single problem. We don't actually print that much but when we do it is really handy for the printer to Actually work.
@@rgarito There is a video that shows a guy opening a printer cartridge . the inside is mostly empty space except for a VERY small piece of cotton with what would probably be 10-15 DROPS of ink in it. And they sell THAT for $70-$85 . That is definitely a rip off / SCAM.
Once upon a time HP was a quality company. My large CAD drawings were produced by an HP Printer. Those days are long gone. Basically you're buying a plastic box with software that limits you to HP ink cartridges and nothing else. I bought a brand new HP printer for tabloid printing. After 3 months I solved the ink cartridge issue by taking it to the recycling center. Goodbye HP.
When you only print one or two dozen pages per year ( most years less), and your printer fails due to ink subscription schemes, then you may feel like catapulting the piece of junk through the corporate office doors. I settled for never buying a HP printer again.
Pretty crazy that it's still profitable to sell the refilled cartridge having paid for a custom flexible circuit board and IC. What is the IC? Were you able to identify? One of those Chinese unbranded MCs that are available for a few cents?
The markings on the chip read 2303 7R511, but other than that I don't know anything about it.
I guess either an ASIC (as that's a pretty high volume product), or (more likely) something like an ATTINY (clone?).
Would be interesting to try and read the firmware back
@@TheRailroad99 I guess "all it needs to do" is intercept the sequence that says "I'm empty" and replace it with "i'm full"
@@relativenormality not sure if it's that easy to do this.
If I were working at HP and my boss told me "make sure nobody can manufacture fake cartridges", I would have designed the protocol so it can't be intercepted. Encrypt that data. Encrypt it not with a fixed key, but a key based on the printer serial. Make some public key authentication. Something like that.
Maybe they were lazy and used just a static key so the data sent is encrypted, but if that same data gets replayed, it still works.
Yeah if it’s fully encrypted it’s going to be very difficult to hack, but not impossible. Decapping the chip and reading its internal memory registers is probably doable, though I doubt the remanufacturers have done this.
A simpler method would be to just have each cartridge have a unique ID, and have the printer record how much ink it has extracted from each ID. Maybe the printer even checks if that ID has been activated from the store with an online connection. The spoof chip would then just need to swap its ID once, or multiple times for a user-refillable cartridge.
It looks like they drilled a hole for the chip on the plastic for the flex PCB to sit level with the old contacts!
I hadn't noticed that, but yes, it does look like that!
Maybe not buy HP printers in the first place?
Thank god the ink companies added this extra security so attackers could use it!
I’ve wondered about this for years. The ink is pretty generic and wrapped in a specialized cartridge with a small circuit. I’m impressed that so much work went into hacking the cartridge and making it work again. I’m more impressed that a profitable business can be built around it.
Was anyone else freaked out by this videos title? As in the cartridge could do something nefarious such as on a wireless network?
And that's why in the future a internet connection for your printer will be mandatory.
Because we check every effing cartridge against our database,
and our database will tell you if you have ink left.
OR we charge you a premium for the automatic replacement in the mail. (Hint: it already left the building)
People are working on open source printers for this reason, I hope we get there soon. I'd rather take my 3D printer and print off the bulk, buy some bits online, and assemble it myself then pay $80 for a couple oz of ink.
To a degree this is happening. We've come across HP printers in the field that if they don't have an Internet connection within a certain period of time, they stop printing altogether until you connect it to one. From a security standpoint this is a terrible idea. We can't manage these printers to the degree we can a PC, so ideally they wouldn't be Internet connected since they're sitting on the LAN for people to use. We need a company to start building open source inkjet printers a la the consumer 3D printing industry.
HP yellow dots. Its both a way for HP to make more cash but also a way to track what is being printed.
@@Pharozos The tracking dots are required by law for any "consumer printer".
And if you don't print via printing press it is classified as a consumer printer.
They even show up on unprocessed scans.
That's 90% of time how they get you if published something you shouldn't, like classified material you photocopied.
Yes photocopier do that too.
@@DerSolinskiit was intended for the purpose, but I doubt it's that effective.
They might know where and roughly when it's been purchased (country, city, maybe even the store) - but that's where the trace ends.
Maybe - if the driver is a data hoarding sniffling piece of crap - which might very well be - it will send telemetric data to the manufacturer servers, including the serial - in that case they might be able to get the IP - and therefore the ISP customer.
But for that the whole information chain has to work perfectly.
I guess most illegal copies are detected in different manners. But it's an option and it could indeed work (and has worked).
It's even more useful (and that is absolutely very reasonable) to restore shredded pieces of paper.
Laser, the best printers for "i maybe print one a month" and "i print all the time"
The toner doesn't go "bad" if left for months at a time and toner carts can be had for cheap
Laser printed text is also more waterproof. For those who print stickers, labels, transparencies that can get wet.
Okidata made a laser printer in the 90s with a refillable tube for toner.
I bought a big bottle of toner for $20. I'm almost ready to buy another bottle
.
And I used that printer daily. I'm looking for them used on eBay but you would be a fool to sell it..
They can make a cheap printer that lasts decades and uses cheap toner. They choose not to.
All the patents of expired figure out how to make when yourself Mr rocket scientist
hp laserjet 3si. you can use copier toner to refill it.
@@stevetheborg I used the 3si for a decade
That was back when hp made good printers. Now they make garbage designed to make you constantly buy absurdly priced ink that seems to have less shelf life than milk in the sun.
@@DeadCat-42 you could still be running the 3si
@@stevetheborg it has a bad fusor with a line in it.
I used to use a cheap printer with a cheap CISS attached which worked fabulously most of the time. Costs to run it were miniscule compared to cartirdges. After about a decade I finally bought an Epson refillable tank printer. It is amazing, reliable and high quality. It cost a chunk to buy originally but I have saved that many times over in ink costs. I am still using the original ink three years after first use. Epson ET-8500. Love it!
Check out the inside of the chassis. It's flooding itself with waste ink and will eventually destroy itself that way.
HP LaserJet 4050 TN... 30+ years old and still going strong😂 Never understood that fscking ink jet thing, that ink is more expensive than human blood🎉
We used to do something similar for iPhones to get around carrier locking. But yeah they were man in the middle circuit boards for your iPhone so you could get it working on T-Mobile or overseas.
After having to replace the yellow cartridge for the 4th time in a year after having NEVER printed color I went full "Office Space" on my epson 510. Ispiked that thing into the concrete like I had just run the winning touchdown in the Superbowl. I viewed them and there I will never waste another second of my life with an inkjet printer. Bought a laser printer on sale and 6 years later it's working perfectly and has never once refused to print.
Ah, seems like yellow was being used for page tracking dots 🤔 I remember this issue on my last inkjet printer 😂 The benefit of laser is that it doesn't use toner to track documents!
Lot of good comments so far. Let me add my experience.
When my old system died, my old HP would not install on the new system. Couldn't find a driver anywhere. All I wanted was a SCANNER. Bought a new cheap HP 2700. It won't even SCAN when a cartridge is out of ink!
I worked in HP inkjet printhead and cartridge R&D and manufacturing for ten years. They used to be great- I won't by HP products with other people's money now.
Never would I buy another HP printer. Regional restrictions, not allowing 3rd party cartridges and faulty detection of their own cartridges. Bought Brother printers and never looked back.
Not the only reason not to buy HP but a very good one!
Odd thing is, Im currently on a plan of $1.49 a month for ink and SURPRISE it lasts at least a year before "running out". When HP has to foot the bill, they make sure you squeeze every drop out. I purposely change the cartridge before I'm supposed to, cause I'm petty like that.
However, I'd love to get my hands on one of these guys!
HP will assign 80% of their printer engineering staff to precluding this vulnerability in the future; no matter the cost. Unfortunately, the new cartridges will therefore be $99.99 each next year to pay for all this DRM enforced monopoly. People buy into this sort of Apple-like scheme, so I guess they like it.
I fixed the problem of printing a year ago when I switched to a Canon all in one color laser. The cartridges it came with lasted well even though they were just starter cartridges. Then I invested in a full set of genuine Canon cartridges. I used inkjet for years buying supplies from Carrot ink here in Texas but I finally gave up on inkjet. Color laser technology is now at least affordable for the machine and less expensive and troublesome to operate.
Part of the info burned into the internal HP chip is date of birth which is used (along with date of install) to calculate expiry date. HP assumes it won’t be reliable, even if it’s still half full, after 5 years from birth or 3 years from install (not exact but close enough, it’s a weird formula). It’s plenty of time and avoids whiners that are dissatisfied with their print quality from ancient dry or gummy cartridge spray nozzles.
Refill chips alter the birth and expiry info along with the amount of ink remaining. That’s about it, had to be done.
It's not an attack...it's a workaround to save money. I do understand the analogy...but I expected a detructive MIM attack using a cartridge from the title.
In computer science terminology software or hardware that has been devised with the intention of defeating a security system would be termed an attack, even if the real-world objective is to defeat profiteering by manufacturers and so not considered nefarious by anyone other than those companies
I wouldn't call this an "attack". It's an old technique for adjusting digital information. I believe this is the same process some car performance "chips" adjust the spark and fuel and boost levels when the engine computer is locked.
HP might disagree with you ;>
@@summetj That's fair
@@summetj HP and its 'business practices' are the reason for this 'attack' to exist in the first place.
@@u2bear377 Yep, good old razor and blades....
Its a mod chip, a man in middle attack is used for hostile takeover methods, this is spoofing commands. Stay wrong
The patch gives the ink levels in the printer so the customer does not have an empty ink message every time they print, HP then aggressively update firmware to block this patch. TURN OFF AUTO FIRMWARE UPDATES IS THE KEY or don't purchase a HP Printer.
Don't buy HP.
Buy a pricier "laser" with toner printer.
The only attack I see is the one coming from HP. This flexboard is actually a shield.
A few years back there was a movie called Paycheck, about a reverse engineer, Ben Afflick, that disabled a time machine with a similar device that he referred to as a 'switch' Clear laminate over a vital part of one board in a 30+ frame. This person probably took a bit of coaching from this.
A word of advice ... every update you accept and install, brings you one step closer to this scenario,
All these printer companies making their printers really cheap to lure you in like some drug dealer on a dark and dodgy street corner to hook you on their product and then lock you in to their overpriced 'fix'. Scummy sums it up best.
So, it makes you wonder why the printer has the additional contacts that make this work.
From what I can see in the video, the flexboard doesnt just sit in between existing contacts, it connects to ones the genuine flexboard does not have.
Those contacts are probably used during manufacturing to do this very thing... bypass the DRM and let the test the printer. In fact, I would guess that this design/idea came from someone who works for HP.
Not that there's anything wrong with that, I just find it funny that not even HP want to deal with their DRM.
I stay away from HP printers these days. Nothing but a money grab scheme.
Their laptops too, I've owned HP laptops from all price brackets and they're all bad value.
Its gone much further than this. If you really want to, you can layer a chip underneath a LED, and you will never know unless you take off every led to look for it. All it needs a high heat tolerance. I can imagine in the near future someone will make a 1TB storage device with a wireless transmitter that will easily fit and be powered under a traditional LED (if it isn't already done) Some flash storage actually works better under high heat.
Bought a used LaserJet 2300d that came with a toner cartridge. Lasted me around 10 years. No kidding.
okay bud, we get it... your computer chips say "Heeey"
And thats fkn cringe.
This is the same way that the first iPhones were "unlocked" to work with carriers that they weren't launched on yet. There was a tiny interposer that lied about which carrier the sim card was for.
I stopped buying HP well over a decade ago. They lure you in with cheap printers, but that comes at the cost of expensive ink.
HP charges not by the ink level, but by how many times the cartridge is used and worse, by how long it has been installed. Each time the printer interfaces with the IC on the OEM cartridge, historical data gets read and new info gets written to non-volatile memory. Obviously the IC on the remanufactured cartridge exists to spoof the printer into thinking that the cartridge is genuine.
Man we used to simply pull the empty cartridge out, refill the cartridge with ink, delete the printer app, reinstall the printer app, install the refilled ink cartridge. We never bought any cartridges except for what came with the printer when it was new. That was in early 2000s, haven't needed a printer for years/decade. Anyway, just delete the printer app and reinstall it.
Printers have evolved a lot in terms of taking your money. I don't think that still works by now. Thanks for the context
@@ЯСуперСтар It still works, you didn't even try, ha, ha. 😂
@@Nova-m8d Last time i was buying a printer dinosaurs were around, so yeah i didn't.
I'm still using an HP all-in-one, because I usually don't want to fire up my high-end scanner when the HP works good enough for most purposes.
Otherwise, I'm using a cheap Brother laser printer that cost less than the two HP ink carts. (I picked up the Brother about 5 years ago for $80 when it went on sale on Amazon.) I find I really don't need color...
What a real scumbag of a company (HP).
I'm really surprised no one has started their own small "open source" printer company. I would think that someone could make a small fortune just building small black and white ink jet printers.
I thought the same
I want to see a similar approach to Car Interface OS's rather than seeing those cheap clones that use older Android chips and sucks using them for anything other than basic FM radio and TH-cam and Bluetooth
One word: Patents...
The cartridges dont have a level sensor, they have a page counter. The logical thing this chip does would be that it communicates a lower nunber of pages printed than is true.
I wouldn't call it a man in the middle attack at all as there is no malicious code being sent to your computer, this is in place to ensure that your printer recognizes the cartridge as a valid ink cartridge.
Aftermarket has been doing this for years already to bypass cartridge restrictions. Both ink and laser. In the early days of this it was simply serial numbers hard coded to an add-on wafer external to the cartridge-being an in-house repair shop with lots of printers in use we'd keep the old wafers and reuse them to get every bit of use out of a cartridge. Just keep track of them and cycle them in sequence (printer would remember X number of previous cartridges).
I refilled ink in HP for years. Until I realized that HP will waste your Expensive ink. It literally wastes the ink in cleaning cycles. I have Brother printers now, which I like alot better.
It's probably changing the expiration of the cartridge. They're often good for just a year. I have a box full of never used but expired carts. If I put it in the printer it won't let me use them.
I got tired of the expensive cartridge issues and the poor connectivity of my old HO printer and replaced a still functional HP printer with a Epson tank printer. I don't have to deal with HP cartridges or connectivity ever again. 😊
The enemies of HP are our friends 😊
In the uk it was cheaper to buy another cheap hp printer than get new ink but now i bought an ink tank printer
@@nps5886 unfortunately the ink cartridges that ship with new HP printers are extra small.
Like others have said in here laser is the way to go. Toner can sit in my printer for 5 years, when I go to print I don’t care if it takes 90 seconds to warm up, but it’s definitely gonna print just fine.
Very interesting sir.
Just buy the whole printer from the company making those chips. Pantum FTW!
That flex circuit and chip most likely have a cost of about 5 cents when manufactured in bulk.
That's a nice fix. Don't think I'd call it an "attack" myself, tho - my first thought reading the video headline was that it's sponsored by HP XD
Didn't Seiko lose a court battle about this same thing with large format printers a long time ago already? I'm still rocking a Lexmark E321 laser from the beginning part of the 2000's with a 6000 page cartridge which has lasted for over a decade now as I print very seldomly. I like the fact that I can just take the printer from the closet, turn it on, insert paper, print, put it back in the closet waiting for another few months until I need to print again. I calculated that with this pace of printing the current cartridge will run out around 2045.
HP certainly do their bit to discourage unnecessary printing!
I recall that 30 years ago, they had these devices called "Dongles" that had to be plugged into the back of PCs for certain high-dollar software packages to run. The story I heard was that they were named after someone named Don Gall, so that is where the name came from, but probably apocryphal.
These are still often used in lots of expensive medical programs
@@johnsa3567it's still used to this day. I'd usually encountered these dongles, "security dongles", on arcade cabinets where games would not load if it is not present
One example is House of the Dead 4, where it uses parallel port as their security dongle. Most machines like Pump it Up uses USB
Physical dongles are still used for mid and high value music software (Protools uses the iLok still).
@@johnsa3567 engineering software as well, CNC controllers too or such. Heck I've seen the Sega arcade boards that are PC based (the ALLS for example) have a USB slot for that key chip too.
The hardware itself you plug into already identifies itself as a security token only and that's it.
Best thing i ever did with my old hp printers was replacing them with epson ecotank printers. i can easily refill them any time I please with any old bottles of ink.
I never would have guessed the frontier of cyberpunk warfare against corporations would be happening for freaking printer ink
@@Praisethesunson Printer ink is expensive...
Huh... Interesting stuff! :D
Thanks for the video!
I've been using re-cycled cartridges since forever at a fraction of the cost of the original propriety ones and have never had one single issue with them. It's interesting how printer manufacturers have steadily increased the complexity of protection on their products and how this has been steadily circumvented.
@@mikethespike7579 in the case of this specific cartridge, it worked just fine, but the Ink would "spread" just a little bit more than the genuine HP ink, so all of my text would look just slightly more "Bold" than was "normal". Not a serious issue, but still a detectable difference.
I think the software is interesting to look into it
I always use Canon. Been drilling and filling my own cartridges for about 15 years.
The real issue is the nonstop attempt by manufacturers to squeeze every last dime out of the supply chain they can. They figure that MOST customers will grumble but never take the step of trying to get around their nonsense. They also know that in the big picture, they will lose a few customers, but will retain most of them because they have "invested" in their physical printers, so the customers figure it's not worth their effort to fight it so they will pay up with their extortion. The big companies don't really care if they piss off a few, as long as the net revenue keeps going up. It's a really sad commentary about modern company integrity and trust.
It's a choice between spending $100+ or $10+ for the same cartridge. I welcome this MiTM hack.
I stick with Epson. I have zero issues with refilled/reman/non-genuine carts and all i have to do is occasionally clean out the waste ink tank and do a factory reset and it's all good again. Canon and HP can go suck balls as far as i'm concerned!
Nice. Hey EU, you banned so much useful and fun things recently, ban printer DRM too!
I love this shadiness against HP's BS.
Having read the comments, are there printer brands that are much better value?
SCREW HP and the horse it rode in on!
Does the chip have firmware? If so read it to a file and send it to someone who can decompile it. Would be interesting to see HP’s codes.
People and businesses should never ever buy an HP printer. Do not reward that level of corporate greed.
So where can I get some of these? My job made me buy HP printer. I rarely need to use it but the fact I can no longer print out one page as needed is beyond maddening.
I reviewed this specific cartridge here: th-cam.com/video/jtn2a742SmM/w-d-xo.html
There is an amazon affiliate link in the video description.
@@summetj Thank you so much!!
The fact it was worth someone's time and expertise to reverse engineer these chips, design and manufacture a man in the middle exploit and then sell it no doubt still at a profit shows just how disgustingly overpriced printer ink still is
So its like a card skimmer, but for printers.
@@deltaray3 same type of hardware, although I doubt it is stealing data.
The link for this cartridge please !
I reviewed it in this video, which has the link to the specific product in the description: th-cam.com/video/jtn2a742SmM/w-d-xo.html
It’s not an attack if it adds useful features and does no harm otherwise…
Can I have the contact, because I have a HP OfficeJet 6600 and I want to cartridge to fill up. Thank you.
This is the review of the replacement Ink cartridge, you can find the link in the description: th-cam.com/video/jtn2a742SmM/w-d-xo.html
We got modchips on ink cartridges before GTA VI
They could give us official refillable cartridges or not use this DRM BS. Overseas they sell them as refillable.
Good because hp and others are stiffing customers on cartrige prices
i was given a "printer" that i cant even get the software for...
one of those UV resin things for doing the phone covers and credit cards...
cant say ive found any open source stuff for it either... iunno. better off hacking it up and making a router from it... beefy enough! weighs about 100kg...
reminding me, i fired up my resin 3d printer last night, and yeah... that softwares pretty "locked down" as well... all "cloud server" and "no connection found" nonsense. i just wanna print this simply little bracket! ffs!
*fires up milling machine and makes said part in about the same time software takes to simply slice file without teh smell or mess of UV resin*
Game Genie for HP cartridges.
did it for years with an old Epsom printer, just pried off original and replaced with hacked/purchased chip... I paid $5 for altered firmware for my current Brother laser printer; the printer now thinks it is ALWAYS full, allowing me to refill the toner as many times as i like! down side, i dont get advanced warning when the toner is low... a filled cartridge lasts for thousands of pages so it worth it
Oh, Brother, this printer STINKS!
Thank god i still use my dot matrix
I have simple solution...don't buy HP! There so many other printer manufacturer to choose from. Why choose the expensive HP for the same/better performance that is out to ruining you financially?
I will NEVER buy another HP product. No matter what it is.
I bought some nice markers instead of a printer. I can put them in a plotter.