Users of a popular 3D printer recently received an ominous message on their devices: disconnect the gadget from the Internet or face the consequences. Apparently the devices contain a serious vulnerability that can be exploited in several ways.
Users of the Anycubic 3D printer flocked to Reddit to share their experiences of receiving an unsolicited message through their device. The message was called “hacked-machine_readme” and claimed that the device had a “critical vulnerability.” To “avoid potential exploitation,” users should disconnect their devices from the internet, the message reads.
“This is just an innocent message. You have not been harmed in any way,” the message concludes.
Three million messages
According to the warning message, the printers contain an unspecified vulnerability in Anycubic’s MQTT service, which can apparently be used to “connect and control” internet-connected 3D printers. MQTT is described as a “lightweight, publish-subscribe, machine-to-machine network protocol for message queuing/message queuing service”.
It is designed to connect to remote devices with limited network bandwidth or other limitations (which fits the description of your average IoT device).
“What can be done? Well, I could RM your entire printer, but I don’t feel like wasting your prints or filament that you actually spent money on,” the message reads. “It’s also possible to put a startup script into the printer, but I haven’t done that yet. Let’s hope anycubic fixes their MQTT server. And plz anycubic, make the printer open source.”
The author of the message concluded by saying that it had been sent to 2.8 million devices.
Anycubic’s website and Twitter account did not mention this incident at the time of writing. An administrator of the Reddit forum responded to one of the threads and said the company was looking into the matter.
Through TechCrunch