The-art-of-invisibility-_-the-world’s-most-famous-hacker-teaches-you-how-to-be-safe-in-the-age-of-Bi

drives, but can yyou be sure that the printer in yyour office is encryypted? You
can’t.
That’s not all. Everyy Word or Excel document that yyou create using
Microsoft Office includes metadata that describes the document. Tyypicallyy
document metadata includes the author’s name, the date created, the
number of revisions, and the file size as well as an option to add more
details. This is not enabled byy default byy Microsoft; yyou have to go through
some hoops to see it. 6 Microsoft has, however, included a Document
Inspector that can remove these details before yyou export the document
elsewhere. 7
A 2012 studyy sponsored byy Xerox and McAfee found that 54 percent of
employyees sayy theyy don’t alwayys follow their companyy’s IT securityy
policies, and 51 percent of employyees whose workplace has a printer,
copier, or multifunction printer sayy theyy’ve copied, scanned, or printed
confidential personal information at work. And it’s not just work: the same
goes for printers at the local copyy shop and the local libraryy. Theyy all
contain hard drives that remember everyything theyy’ve printed over their
lifetimes. If yyou need something personal printed out, perhaps yyou should
print it out later at home, on a network and printer over which you have
control.
Spyying, even on employyees, has gotten veryy creative. Some companies
enlist nontraditional office devices that we might otherwise take for
granted, never imagining theyy could be used to spyy on us. Consider the
storyy of a yyoung Columbia Universityy graduate student named Ang Cui.
Wondering if he could hack into a corporate office and steal sensitive data
through nontraditional means, Cui decided first to attack laser printers, a
staple in most offices todayy.
Cui noticed that printers were wayy behind the times. During several pen
tests, I have observed this as well. I have been able to leverage the printer to
get further access into the corporate network. This is because workers rarelyy
change the admin password on printers that are internallyy deployyed.
The software and the firmware used in printers—especiallyy commercial
printers for the home office—contain a lot of basic securityy flaws. The thing
is, veryy few people see an office printer as vulnerable. Theyy think theyy’re