Brother Printer Queue targeting an IP in Washington State

Discussion in 'Malware Help - MG (A Specialist Will Reply)' started by bcavender, Sep 13, 2015.

  1. bcavender

    bcavender Private E-2

    This is about as odd of a problem (possibly stealth malware) as I have seen.

    I have a network color laser (Located in Tennessee). Brother 3040CN. I can print to it from my notebook once and it works fine. A little later I send it another job and the queue shows offline. A power cycle of the printer brings it back online, but a little later it goes offline again.

    I tried pinging its IP on the local private network and it does not respond. If I ping its host name (dhcppc1), I do get a response. Digging into the ping, the address was in Kirkland Washington. Huh? Scratch, scratch.

    I deleted the printer and reinstalled it. Works fine. Next day it's offline again and the Wash address (98.124.199.1) is back again when I ping the printer's hostname. That is suspicious as all get out.

    I deleted the printer again, did a network printer search during the reinstall and it found my Brother at 200.3.2.9 PLUS a second 'printer' named:

    http://200.3.2.9:80/WebServices/Device/200.3.2.9
    (Printer search/Ping screen scrape attached)

    Never seen that show up before. I certainly did not put that in my notebook.

    Further searching turned up a second Brother HL3040 "Series" printer icon. (see second screen scrape). When I right click on it and select REMOVE ... I cannot delete it. That really makes this suspicious.

    Is someone running malware on my machine and in stealth sending data out to the Northwest?

    :banghead

    Any suggestions about how to get rid of this "WebService" hijacking my printer?

    Best regards,
    Bruce
     

    Attached Files:

  2. TimW

    TimW MajorGeeks Administrator - Jedi Malware Expert Staff Member

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