“The blog includes a simple Perl script that can be used to scan the LAN to see if any HP devices are running Web servers.” “Simply surfing to the IP address of scanner will expose the Web interface and the WebScan functionality,” he said. Enterprises can either password-protect the WebScan functionality or disable the Web interface altogether so that the scanner is not remotely accessible.”īy default, the scanner has a Web interface enabled, he continued. “In general, an attacker would know exactly where the document was coming from.

“From the perspective of an external threat, it isn’t difficult to know who owns the IP address or domain name that the scanner is hosted on,” Sutton said. In an internal threat, a “disgruntled employee could simply write a script to regularly run the scanner in the hopes of capturing an abandoned document,” he said. 31, “What many enterprises don’t realize is that their scanners may by default allow anyone on the LAN to remotely connect to the scanner and … scan and retrieve” any document left behind.

“Given the popularity of HP hardware and the fact that WebScan-like functionality has been embedded in many HP servers for years, it’s reasonable to assume that the actual number is quite high.” “With limited effort, within a few hours, we were able to find dozens of exposed scanners simply using Google Bing queries,” Sutton said.

However, Zscaler Vice President of Security Research Michael Sutton said through scanners corporations are potentially left open to the risk of leaking confidential data. HP did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication. 31, the company turned up a number of different documents on third-party scanners-including a signed check and a voting document. During the past two weeks, Zscaler said Aug. Unfortunately, Zscaler found that oftentimes this functionality is not password-protected and is enabled by default. The feature, WebScan, allows users to remotely scan a document and have an image of the document sent from the scanner to their Web browser. Research from Zscaler has exposed how a feature in Hewlett-Packard’s all-in-one printers can be abused remotely to steal scanned documents.

Hp scan document