Digital Copiers, Faxes and MFP’s and their hard drives

I’m a subscriber to long time UK Tech journalist and Blogger, Charles Arthur / @charlesarthur Overspill blog where he currates links etc. Recently, he linked to an old report, from 2010, but it’s always worth reminding people of the dangers of photocopiers, fax machines and multi-function printers, especially older ones.

Digital photocopiers keep a record of what they’ve seen. Think about that. https://t.co/ihgo9DqXA4 pic.twitter.com/pAucE7FOPw

— Charles Arthur (@charlesarthur) May 11, 2018

Copiers that are lightly used often have a lifecycle of 10-15 years. If you buy rather than lease, it’s quite possible you still have one that doesn’t include encryption of the internal hard drive. Even with a encrypted drive, there is still potential to hack the device software and retrieve the key, although pretty difficult.

The surprise thing is that many modern Multi-function Printers (MFP) also have local storage. While in modern models it is not an actual hard drive, it is likely to be some form of onboard flash memory ala cell phone memory, either part of the system board or via an embedded SD card. It’s worth remembering that these machines are Fax, copier, printers, and scanners all in one machine.

The US Federal Trade Commision has a web page that covers all the basics, in plain language.

Whatever the device, it is still incumbent on the owner to ensure it is wiped before returning it, selling it, or scrapping it. PASS IT ON!

For those interested in how you can get data from a copier/MFP type device, Marshall University Forensic Science team has a paper, here.