Canon released a bulletin on Monday, reminding printer users, in the sale, to discard or repair printers before the printer manually deletes the Wi-Fi wireless network settings stored in the printer, in order to prevent this sensitive information from falling into the wrong hands.
The announcement says that wireless network connection settings in the printer may not be deleted by the regular initialization process. These settings include information such as the name, password, type, local network IP address, MAC address, and network configuration of the wireless network. If this information is exposed, bad actors may use it to illegally access the network to which the printer is connected.
Canon recommends that printer users should follow the steps below to manually clear the wireless network settings before giving the printer to any third party:
For printers with a dedicated reset function, users should:
- Reset all settings (Reset Settings -> Reset All)
- Enable the wireless LAN
- Reset all settings again
For printers without a dedicated reset feature, users should:
- Reset the LAN settings
- Enable wireless LAN
- Reset the LAN settings again
Canon says that nearly 200 printer models are affected, a specific list can be viewed here.
