this post was submitted on 25 Jan 2024
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They say it's tell the printer how much ink is left...
But it's so they can disable a cartridge that's been in a machine X months instead of working till it runs out/dry.
So yeah, it doesn't need to be there.
Is that all it does? Is HP so backwards that they introduce a whole new attack surface just to store a date stamp?
...Actually don't answer that.
It's easy to have a printer cartridge that works till it's out.
But they introduced the chip years ago (over a decade?) with the excuse it provides the warning when ink is low. Which is a good thing, they just tacked on the "stop working after X months" on as well.
They tried to cut off 3rd party with the chip, and lost that case.
So this is what they came up with to get it retried.
But most importantly: HP were the ones that came up with this idea and paid someone to develop it...
So not only did they introduce the attack surface, when no one noticed they paid someone to notice and are now telling everyone
So even worse than what you said