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2026-07-11

mostly written by 2025-11-19

How I scanned internet for insecure printer ports

How to find printers

I used search string ssl:"Xerox Generic Root" on Shodan. You can pay for the subscription or figure out some tricks to view 20 results at a time on the free version.

What did I print?

A single page. Top of the page has this text.

1. Your printer is exposed to the public internet. You should probably change this.
2. I think humanity might go extinct by 2030. I am printing this book cover as a guerilla marketing technique. I am not affiliated with the book authors.
3. I can refund your print costs if requested. My email: samuel.da.shadrach@gmail.com

(Update 2026-07-11 - This email address was shared at the time, but is no longer in regular in use.)

This is followed by full sized image of the book cover of IABED by Yudkowsky and Soares.

Results

I printed atleast 100 copies of this on atleast 40 printers across the world. I sent print jobs for 1000 copies, which is larger than the tray size of most printers.

I haven't received any emails yet (as of 2025-11-19). (Update 2026-02-12 I did in fact receive atleast one email reply a long back)

Is this a good marketing technique?

No

• It doesn't scale
• The only reason it is cheap is because I'm stealing other people's paper and ink. Most printers are on a university or corporate budget. The person responsible for the printer can't be bothered to email a possibly hostile stranger on the internet (i.e. me), in order to get their money back.
• If you want to spam people who don't want to hear your message, you're better off sending bulk email, or bulk snail mail, or distributing fliers via drone.

I mainly did this as a hacking exercise, not a marketing exercise.

More on Shodan

Some good Shodan queries

I might write a longer article about Shodan / Censys some other day.

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