This YouTuber has found the ultimate trick to stop spending a fortune on ink cartridges for your printer

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This scene may sound familiar to you. You need to quickly print a document before an appointment. While you recently bought a cartridge and it seems to be full, the machine refuses to print… YouTuber Jay Summit has found a radical solution to resolve this problem.

A complex but effective method

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In a video, he shows how he managed to bypass the digital rights management (DRM) system of HP12 printers. The latter forces customers to buy official cartridges sold by HP. Here's how he did it.

The videographer carried out a so-called “man-in-the-middle” attack. He uses a flexible printed circuit that he attaches to the original contacts of the cartridge before redirecting the signal to a chip. It will then modify the signal and fool the printer into believing that the print limit has not been reached. The machine will also be convinced that it is interacting with an HP cartridge when it is not.

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As you will have understood, this method is clearly not accessible to everyone. It is nevertheless in the public domain and budding DIYers can get hold of it. Obviously, HP should not appreciate these attempts. As our colleagues at Clubic remind us, the American company continues to justify its criticized methods by playing on the security argument.

The CEO of the company, Enrique Lores, thus claims that the printer could be infected by malware that would enter the machine through unofficial cartridges before taking over the network as a whole.

A class action against HP

But beyond these laudable concerns on paper, this motive is very convenient for companies in the sector who thus keep their customers in their ecosystem and force them to pay regularly.

As a reminder, HP was fined 10 million euros by the Italian competition authority. A relatively modest sum considering the company's results. More recently, American consumers have decided to launch a class action lawsuit.

They hope to eliminate firmware updates that prevent unofficial cartridges from working on the company's printers. A prospect that would undermine HP's organization, which offers a subscription system where cartridges are sent automatically when necessary.

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