In April 2015, a group of researchers from the Singapore University of Technology and Design flew a smartphone-equipped drone up to the 30th floor of an office building and waited. Loaded on the phone was an app that scanned the office s wireless network for an open printer then mimicked it, forcing local computers to connect to the phone instead. Intercepted documents were copied onto a Dropbox account and the file passed along to the real printer for output. The office workers were none the wiser.
A month earlier a cyberattack of more malicious intent by the notorious hacker, Weev, resulted in a stream of racist fliers being spewed out of the printers across 12 US universities. The January before, an unidentified hacker held a large Danish paint wholesaler to ransom by entering their network through a printer and locking the entire thing down.