(1) China is a Communist Country (That's what PRC stands for)
PRC stands for "peoples republic of china" not "Communist country" note the different letters used. They are communist to my understanding but that is rather irrelevant.
(2) They are in competition with us for most commerce.
So is Japan.
(3) They have a major plan for offensive Cyber warfare.
Let me guess, you acquired this information via Coca Cola, who has monitoring devices in their bottles and one of the bottles overheard a egregarious conversation between Chinese officials that revealed this? Either that or you made it up, or you read it somewhere, where it was almost certainly made up. If they have a major plan of this type I doubt they are just going to leave the documents sitting around. (of course, if an unassuming Coca-Cola special agent bottle happened to be nearby....
(4) They are looking for places to install "takeover" routines for future attacks.
Again, stating something as a fact doesn't make it one.
(5) They have a record of installing malware in Flash drives, picture frames and other electronic devices sold in the USA.
See above.
(6) They have a contract to Manufacture HP products for the US.
So far your 1 out of 6. good work. And actually HP owns the factories in China, and various other countries, that manufacture the components; they aren't being manufacturered for "the US" they are being manufacturered by HP owned factories for HP. (same for a number of other corporations, in fact, many Disk-stamping factories for MS software is in china! Dear gawd they might take us over with word macros!)
(7) Chinese companies also get paid by the PRC government to conduct offensive Cyber operations (Per State Cable traffic, courtesy of Wiki)
OK... and this has to do with printers... how? Even if we assume it is true.
( The "all in one" HP printer based firmware won't be changed out in a $150 product....(it's not cost effective)
(9) users will use it with impunity, powering it up "all the time".......
The same can be said for toasters. Toasters are manufacturered there and people use them all the time. Clearly there has to be some government somewhere using that for espionage.
What are the chances/possibilities that most, if not all HP "all in one printers" from China are using
software (in firmware, chips inside the device) that is not generated simply to make HP products work?
nil.
Unfortunately these days....when you say "all in one" printer you are really saying "Send/Receive" full duplex.
No, when you say "all-in-one" your talking about a device that has a Printer, Scanner, Copier, and Fax. It has nothing to do with transmission direction or speed.
This can't happen fortunately, with a simple "Printer". A simple printer is designed to receive ASCII code from the computer and convert it
into images and text, in color or Black and White.
Since when? printers have been Bidirectional since 1987 or so when they introduced the bi-directional parallel port. Additionally, printers haven't used ASCII code since around the same time, that's why you need special drivers to print at all, you can't just say "copy worddocument.doc PRN" and have a printed copy of your word document. you just get the binary format printed to hard copy.
There is no send function allowed, or needed, expcept for simple data signaling for
printable data and exchange of code related to chip timing for the print driver Chip. (It's a one way street, PC to printer)
the printer sends back information when it's out of paper or encounters an error; additionally, it sends back information when it needs to download a font from the computer. Only a certain number of fonts can fit inside a printers memory at once, and of course that memory is cleared everytime you shut off and turn on the printer (which would also destroy this data you are saying is being pilfered)). Either you or this "expert" you talked to have absolutely no idea how printers work. I suspect the later. The former is clearly very susceptible to disinformation and conspiratorial thinking.
The following paragraph was just plain stupid. I can't even properly make fun if this paragraph, that's how dismally lacking in intellectual thought it is. But I shall try.
The "all in one Printer" however, contains a Scanner, whose job it is to send images and data for multiple application processes
to and in the computer...
The scanner just sends bitmap data, when requested, to the USB port. It doesn't have any relevance to "multiple application processes".
Scanners require sophisticated software to obtain and process/route images in multiple formats.....
What an opportunity to put a small routine (when you know that the scanner will be connected to a USB port) to allow
the scanner software to exploit the PC and it's on line capability....
TDEMSYR. If they wanted to "bug" the software, why the *censored* did they need to mess around with the firmware? first off, the driver software always loads on system startup and there is no need to have the scanner connected in order for them to send the vital information about your business documents to some remote Chinese server. Additionally, there is no need to attempt to reverse Engineer the various EEPROM chips that are sent in order to add these "secret routines" that somehow, despite them only being connected via a USB connection, allows the scanner to send data (what data? where is this data coming from? *censored*?) via the computers connection. Additionally, the secret Chinese agents won't need to also pass the various HP QA tests and especially the part where they compare the firmware code to their master firmware code
which was written by HP programmers. They do this not to detect espionage but to prevent the use of bad chips. Obviously people dreaming up conspiracy theories like to take confirmation bias to an art form and discard these types of facts despite their obvious relevance.
This is made readily possible by users who
leave their all-in-one printer powered on and power their computer up and down. The computer takes a few minutes to come up to
speed loading all software from the hard drive, while the printer/scanner is ready to "communicate" as soon as the PC
has enough power at the USB port.
Away we go, a two way transmission with a Chinese printer on the Internet
before the PC is even aware it is making the connection.
That doesn't even make sense. You're saying that once the USB drivers load the scanner takes over the computer. How does this occur? Magic? seriously you or whomever dreamed up this nonsense has a very vivid imagination but lacks the consensus to even add believable facts to the story.
The Internet Security program comes up after the Internet
exchange or transaction has taken place...in fact it's possible and feasable to limit the loading of the Internet Security program until
after the Internet data transaction has taken place. You basically have a printer in Communications with the Internet without
user controls. The unfortunate thing is Scanner software is part of the "All in one process" installed on Board the printer
on a series of chips called "firmware"...
And again, if the scanner/printer driver software is part of this "all in one process" why do these secret chinese factory workers have to add all this other redundant nonsense, including the magical ability for a device to completely modify the USB protocol and take over the host computer which
by definition of the USB protocol is the one in charge of what the device can do needless to say there is no "give me unfettered access to your network connection" USB command.
That's not something I want attached to my computer, thankyou very much.
You, or whomever dreamed up this nonsense, has also forgone the implicit connection most people have with a reasonable mind.
On the other hand, I have a similar story of deceit and pure evil!
My Samsung camera is designed to steal government secrets, and it relays the information to the Chinese Government (which is weird since Samsung is Japanese, I think) via a network of interconnected HP printers, which add an invisible watermark to all documents they print in the form of magic voodoo ink; eventually, the documents the printer's own prints will come into the posession of a Chinese agent who has been genetically engineered to be able to see the invisible ink, at which point they will forward the information to their secret bureau, and then the chinese government will hear about the issues my city has during the hot summer that requires them to impose water use restrictions. Then all will be lost, since they will create a weather changing device that will hover over Nanaimo high above the clouds, changing the weather so that every day is a bueatiful sunny day, and no rain will fall for an entire month, and we will go into the odd/even numbered day water use restrictions. How this falls into their grand plan for the dominance of the left is beyond me, but they are crafty buggers.
Actually, now that I think about it, the other day there was a pepsi bottle sitting on my washing machine while it was on, and it was vibrating as a result; I simply moved the bottle, but one could fathom that it wasn't just vibrating as a result of the machines activity but rather it was a sentient, bio-mechanically engineered bottle that was trying ot use morse code to speak to the window. Clearly, this is all a result of some sort of government conspiracy by a foreign government about as far-removed from either the bottling plant for pepsi or the manufacturing of the bottles that they use so as to make such a idea ludicrous.