I have a quick but important public service announcement brought to you by listener Jane. A few weeks ago on Security Bits, Bart Busschots explained how a vast number of printer models (mostly from Brother but also from Fujifilm, Toshiba, and Konica Minolta) had default admin passwords that were easily generated by hackers. The problem was that these printers’ default passwords were generated using a custom algorithm based on the device’s serial number.
The advice was to make sure that you’re not using the default password on your printer. That’s great advice under any circumstances, but was good wisdom yet again.
As this kerfuffle went across the Internet, I sat idly by with a smug look on my face because I distinctly remember my Brother laser printer asking me to set up my own password. I used Bart’s XKPasswd tool to generate a long, strong, random password for me and went on my merry way.
But my smugness was misguided, and that’s where Jane’s PSA comes in. Like me, she knew she’d set her own password on her Brother printer, but decided to double-check, and discovered that it had reverted to the default password. She researched the problem and found a Brother support article linked in the shwonotes that says,
A recent firmware update for your Brother machine has enabled the following default password on your machine’s network settings. You may try one of the following default passwords: initpass, access, admin
It also helpfully shows where to find the default password from a sticker on the printer.
When I received Jane’s email, I tried logging into my Brother laser printer’s WiFi interface, and luckily for me, the password had not been reverted to the default password. But if I were you, I’d take a quick swing by that interface and see if they reset your password during a firmware update in the past. Obviously, I think this is pretty smelly, and I am not pleased with Brother.
However, I am pleased with Jane for bringing this to our attention.