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FTC Targets Copy Machine Privacy Concerns
itwbennett writes "In a letter to US Representative Ed Markey, FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz said that the FTC has begun contacting copy machine makers, resellers, and office supply stores to inform them about privacy concerns over the images that can be stored on the machines' hard drives and trying to 'determine whether they are warning their customers about these risks ... and whether manufacturers and resellers are providing options for secure copying.'"
But this one goes to eleven...
Goatse was actually me, I just couldn't afford a regular colonoscopy
There's absolutely no reason for these machines to have hard drives or any sort of non-volatile storage, beyond what it takes to store the machine's basic configuration settings. We're talking at most 1 MB.
All memory should be volatile, and should be completely erased as soon as the copying is complete.
FTC discovers that there are, on average, 42 scans of people's bottoms per Copy Machine.
Now back to you, Jim!
When I was involved in a tender for MFCs five years ago, this was one of the issues raised... by the vendors. Some claimed they were the only ones that had it, but they were wrong. All the major ones had it. At that time they offered both encryption of all userdata on the local hard drive, and also automatic overwriting of all user data after it was printed.
At the time these were options that one needed to pay extra for, but for anybody concerned with privacy issues, it was available.
One can, of course, ask why the above options are not standard. After all, it is just a question of enabling some software options.
were those who were tasked with writing the software powering these copiers?
Gee, this software may be used in a government office where highly sensitive documents may be scanned. I won't really "delete" any files though, because they might want to recover them, but that's advanced stuff, so I shouldn't inform them that I'm making that copy, it should be a surprise when they call in for support! And in our models where we do allow deleting, we'll just quietly move them to another directory, again for the same purpose.
Perhaps there was some miscommunication when their bosses told them to "shred the files when you're done with them." I can see how that might be somewhat vague in this industry.
That's nothing.
Lots of places still use old brother fax / copy / print machines which utilize "ribbons" instead of ink or toner. This is what they look like
PC-301
It's basically a big carbon transfer sheet. You find these old machines in doctors offices. law offices. etc. Where the owner is too lazy to upgrade their hardware.
They throw out the used ribbon. Guess what? Its literally hundreds of feet of perfect, inverted copies of faxed information. Forms with medical information. SSN numbers. Private legal information. ETC.
All it requires is someone to be lazy enough to throw it away, and someone else bored enough to go dumpster dive.
You put a stack of papers into them, hit the copy 10 times button. It has to print 10 stacks of papers. You want to stand there shoving the paper through 10 times while it does it?
Deleted
My business users did not think to ask IT when they selected a model of fax/scan/copier
It had really cool features like the ability to scan tons of documents all at once, then you go back to your computer and download them from a network share!! such a productivity booster!
So this nice $250k device, which they bought, with no security... which of course did not pass standard security audit...
Scanning confidential documents happens every day... and at the bank for which I work, we take it pretty seriously.
Even disabling the network interface wasn't enough, because users could *accidentally* scan/copy a document and set it to store, which could be accessed by non-permitted individuals. In the end they ended up taking a bath on the whole device.
This has been an issue ever since they started pasting PC's on the backs and sides of copiers. What is that now? Something in excess of 10 years?
It's apparently pretty common for these machines to run an embedded copy of Windows these days. I know someone who was a sysadmin at UC Berkeley a few years back, and she had to clean up the mess when their photocopier picked up a Windows virus and became a spam zombie. This seems similar to the kind of situation we're seeing with people's home routers and cable modems getting owned. The basic problem seems to be that the end user buys something that is a general-purpose computer, but the manufacturer doesn't present it to them as a general-purpose computer that needs maintenance, security patches, etc., and the manufacturer may also choose an initial configuration that is designed for ease of use rather than security (e.g., having passwords that the user doesn't set).
If the only problem was getting your images read out by someone else when the machine is resold, that would seem pretty minor to me. Can't they just design the machine so that the memory used for temporary storage of images is volatile? Then as soon as you unplug the machine that you're going to resell, the memory is wiped.
But if your copier is getting owned by hackers while you're still using it, then the presence of the left-over images seems like it becomes a bigger issue, and harder to secure yourself against.
Find free books.
we'll have to accept the fact that anything that is created by a human being can be reproduced, copied and distributed by a human being.
Technology just makes it easier, that's all. The printing press certainly did.
Boo hoo, whine, whine, whine.
And yes, I've produced copyrighted works that I've made money off of. I don't get in a fluff if I don't get rich off of them, tho.
0.0
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
Is there a constitutional law that was properly added to "the books" that requires copiers have "secure option," that sellers notify buyers of privacy concerns, and so on? Or, is Obama's administration just legislating by decree again?
why would you need memory on a copy machine?
...nearly drive me away from slashdot forever.
When did this become Alex Jones' personal tinfoil-hat blog site?
I cant remember the last time ive had to use a copier for any non-gluteus-maximus related graphics...
Good people go to bed earlier.
Most modern digital electronics have a pretty complete operating system on them, including copiers, printers, fax machines. Data storage, especially for very large data sets such as a high resolution digitally scanned image, is pretty much required. Disk storage is the currently used technique for that storage.
Most copiers do more than copy. They can accept a job over the network, they can use forms or other co-created information, and they can be used to adjust an image after it has been accepted. All this requires RAM and mass storage.
This issue is not new, but as we all become more sophisticated, it does become easier to compromise a device holding your data. I don't have a good answer for the problem.
Best regards.
All that would be stored on these HDD in the machines are pictures of peoples naughty bits anyways. Isn't that what people use copiers for?
If it ain't broke, DON'T fix it.
Of course they don't give a damn about the serial numbers that each copier embeds in every page they print.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
deleted as in fat delete? or fake deleted?
fat delete can be some times be undeleted.
But some boxes / tivos do a fake delete that just removes that data from the list but it's still there likely in some temp file.
as for leased copiers how much is locked out / not allowed to be done by on site stuff?
and I think may off lease copyeea just get sold and how many leasing companies do a full reset? they may just do a factory reset that does not do a full data nuke.
Hm, point taken. I wish I could answer that, but I'm afraid we don't do our own leasing. But, locking those features out at the leaser's end and not doing a nuke when the device is returned is more than a bit negligent on their part (and completely unnecessary; the ONLY use of the hard drive is temporary printout storage, as we don't put any firmware or updates in there).
I work for a copier manufacturer and can shed a little info for those that are interested.
Small office multifunction devices (MFD's) typically don't have hard drives and run embedded real-time operating systems. Some of the newest models DO have SATA hard drives, but the ability to enable "Immediate Image Overwrite" is well documented in the manual and is free.
Mid-sized copier-only configuration machines use Electronic Page Collation RAM to store scanned images and there is no hard drive.
Mid-sized multifunction devices have a drive in the network controller which runs Linux. There is a separate non-user accessible, encrypted partition used for temporary image storage. The "Immediate Image Overwrite" software option has been available for purchase for these products for at least the last 6 years and as of '08 it is being included free of charge.
Large departmental/light production copiers often have two hard drives, one which is the OS drive and one dedicated scratch drive. This drive is often in a cage which is easily removed. Many of our government customers have a "secure" scratch drive which they purchase and retain/destroy, and a non-secure drive which stays with the machine when it is off lease or sold.
Production equipment often has multiple hard drives both in the machine as well as in the raster image processor (RIP). The RIP's run either SunOS or Windows XP Embedded. In either case, these customers are well informed about where and how image data is stored as well as the procedure to erase that data and/or purchase a replacement drive so that they may retain the old drive.
I can remember five years ago removing hard drives from classified machines and handing them directly over to customers to be destroyed. The process was well documented and understood by everyone and it was certainly no secret. Go into any government contractor (Boeing, Lockheed, Jacobs, etc) and the copiers are all clearly marked as to which ones are for classified documents and which ones aren't. And it's been that way for awhile.
the copier deletes the files from the hard drive after the copy run's completed and the images aren't needed anymore.
Files that aren't encrypted can be undeleted.
Been in the business 30 years (AS A TECH, NOT A SALESMAN). This is just another red herring that give the government something else to do. Unless the I.T. department where the machine is located is completely STUPID they have to know these new "MFP's" have a hard drive. Most of these boxes in the last couple years have encryption, data scramblers, or DoD wipe built in, but, as with OTHER SECURITY measures, it is the END USERS responsiblity, NOT the dealer to turn these features on. 99.9% of the time, the only thing the end user asks is how fast is it, and how much does it cost. My policy, and that of the other techs I deal with (mid size dealer, 6 locations scattered across four states) is that at the end of a lease, or trade in, the copier comes back to our office, and if the machine is in resale condition for an overhaul, the drive is WIPED before taken back to the lease company or resale. If the machine is to be disposed of, the drive is removed, & destroyed. In the field, if a drive fails, the I.T. department is given the option of taking the old drive and disposing of it on their own, or, if the end use does not care for the old drive is pulled apart, platters removed and destroyed (all documented on the service work order). This CBS video story just stirred up the masses like Chicken Little "the sky is falling". Unless you STORE information on the drive, the copier "deletes" the file (copy, print scan, non stored ). Yes, just like the old DOS days, the first letter is deleted, the remaining file is there, but overwritten like any other hard drive. Data encryption, when turned on, uses 128 bit to encrypt/decrypt the information on the fly (now reduction in speed). With data overwrite, after a copy job is finished, the area where the file remained is overwritten (DoD L3 or 5). Using a combination of encryption & overwrite, the data is secure. Personally, I've gone into office that have OPEN DESKTOP COMPUTERS that are easier to access than trying to rip out the drive of a copy machine, plus, so many I.T. departments have such lack security, that I can if I wanted, just unhook the copier from the network, plug it into my laptop and with no passwords or other security measures, be right on their network, so, everyone just calm down. You don't have to worry about those "innocent" photos from the office party of your butt, or the "the boss is a jerk" email showing up on the internet. Just google the guy in the CBS video and you'll see that he is SELLING a service to wipe out hard drives on computers, printers & copiers, which is about as pointless as the Best Buy "new computer tuneup" service they offer. It's like wiping your ass before you take a dump...it's not needed!
To do all those functions, it's a computer........... they have been since the first digital copier a long time ago.
This is just weird that it's big news now.
Like the copy machine makers will openly admit they did not tell their customers about the hard drive feature in their copy machines.
What's with the size of those hard drives? They don't need to be so large. Seems as though a small flash drive could be just as efficient.
Also look at the money they will be getting just to supply a app to erase that data. Total rip off.
I am crying foul over the whole deal. Just give it a little time, and someone will create a free app to clean those hard drives. I bet it will be Open Source too!