Can you imagine sitting at your home or office desk and all of a sudden your trusty HP printer burst into flames. Well it’s true, according to an article in The Recycler magazine, issue 228 a research team at Columbia University discovered the flaw. The security flaw in LaserJet products would allow hackers to remotely reprogram the printer with custom firmware that enables unrestricted access and full control, and in instances continually heat the fusers until the paper is ignited.

HP states that their firmware update would address “the potential (…) for a certain type of unauthorised access to HP LaserJet printers”, but HP has “confirmed it has received no customer reports of unauthorised access”

But one research team member stated that “If and when HP rolls out a fix, if a printer is already compromised, the fix would be completely ineffective. Once you own the firmware, you own it forever. That’s why this problem is so serious, and so different. This is nothing like fixing a virus on your PC.”

The article does not say which LaserJet printers are effected or dates that may have an impact on the printers that may be infected. So maybe you should buy a fire extinguisher with every HP LaserJet printer you buy! This will be very interesting to follow, imagine if it’s true and the wrong person figures out how to do this, holy Christmas he could burn down half of New York city if he wanted to just by igniting every HP LaserJet in the city.