Brother printer bug in 689 models exposes default admin passwords

A total of 689 printer models from Brother, along with 53 other models from Fujifilm, Toshiba, and Konica Minolta, come with a default administrator password that remote attackers can generate. Even worse, there is no way to fix the flaw via firmware in existing printers. The flaw, tracked under CVE-2024-51978, is part of a set of eight vulnerabilities discovered by Rapid7 researchers during a lengthy examination of Brother hardware. This crucial vulnerability can be chained with other vulnerabilities discovered by Rapid7 to determine the admin password, take control of devices, perform remote code execution, crash them, or pivot within the networks they're connected to. Not all of the flaws affect every one of the 689 Brother printer models, but other manufacturers, including Fujifilm (46 models), Konica Minolta (6), Ricoh (5), and Toshiba (2), are impacted as well. The default password in the impacted printers is generated during manufacturing using a custom alogirthm based on the device's serial number. According to a detailed technical analysis by Rapid7, the password generation algorithm follows an easily reversible process: Attackers can leak the serial number of the target printer using various methods or by exploiting CVE-2024-51977. They can then use the algorithm to generate the default admin password and log in as admin. From there, they may reconfigure the printer, access stored scans, read address books, exploit CVE-2024-51979 for remote code execution, or explo...