@dangoodin those EEPROMs will contain some magic data that the printer needs to see in order to believe it's a legit ink cartridge. it also tracks the number of printed pages so the cartridge can claim to be empty after a while (they don't detect ink level at all).

I can 99.999% guarantee that even with the most optimal trivial exploit for the printer firmware's parsing of the cartridge data, you cannot weaponise it in any useful way. Why? Because the whole thing is like 32 bytes.

@dangoodin on a combo colour cartridge you might have three or even four separate EEPROM blocks for those colours, so maybe 256 bytes if you're lucky. from which you'd have to trigger the exploit, gain code exec on the printer, and somehow pivot that into malware delivery elsewhere (including storage or download of that malware!)

that is a ludicrously tall order, and would still be strongly predicated on multiple severe firmware bugs in the printer.