I can't imagine it on a normal server expected to serve public internet requests. The way you phrased that though makes me wonder for desktop use, is there a non-cups alternative to printing on linux these days that's gone under my radar? (Please don't say there's a systemd-print...) If nothing else, probably another overdue candidate for the energetic rewrite-it-in-Rust people.

I'm more interested in whether some/all of these work on macOS, which is probably a bigger target.

OP has promised to discuss macOS in part 2 of this blog post series. So sounds like the answer is yes.

https://github.com/OpenPrinting/cups-browsed/issues/36#issue... makes it sounds like most of them don't, and even if they do, it's sandboxed.

There may be something else for that.

> In part II of this series (date TBD since there’s another disclosure in process), we’ll see how to use these new bettercap modules (not yet released) to attack Apple macOS.

> Imagine even having that thing on your system to begin with

Well it is the Common UNIX printing system...

If it was the Not-oft-used Printing System I could understand.

Fair, I just don't print usually. Didn't think the phrase through too much. Sorry about that.

I've talked about alternatives in another reply, they do not offer the same flexibility as CUPS however.

What’s wrong with having CUPS on your system if you actually use a printer? I’m kind of lost as the source of the “imagine”?

That commenter is probably just someone who has never used anything but Windows on the desktop.

I run Linux and have been for 10 years. There have been many vulnerabilities with CUPS over the years and its generally known as being risky.

There at printers that let you send a pdf directly to their ip address, ones that take in usbs, etc...

CUPS does a lot of things, but for desktop use do you really need everything?

I personally haven't printed anything for a long time, so I might've been biased in my reply. So, I'm sorry if the comment was a too generalized.

As another thought, why does it come by default on most distros given its history?

> I personally haven't printed anything for a long time, so I might've been biased in my reply.

Huh. I print less and less since college, but it honestly hadn't occurred to me that you might be a desktop Linux user who just doesn't print anything.

> There at printers that let you send a pdf directly to their ip address, ones that take in usbs, etc...

> As another thought, why does it come by default on most distros given its history?

I assume because people who do much printing definitely want to print in a 'normal', way, directly from applications. Isn't CUPS the only game in town there? That adds up to a lot of inertia. CUPS is mature and featureful and has been around for a long time, plus is integrated with the rest of the stack and all the applications, and it has no direct competitors on those platforms, as far as I'm aware.

Maybe Red Hat would be interested in producing a CUPS replacement, but they may also feel like for Fedora users and desktop users of Red Hat, SELinux and occasional emergency patches is good enough for what is ultimately not their core audience, as well as a hell of a lot cheaper and more politically feasible than a from-scratch rewrite. Idk who else would likely be interested in funding such a project.

> why does it come by default on most distros given its history?

Most distros are made by some high schooler as a weekend project. Fork Ubuntu, add some wacky experimental GUI, done.

And the distros that aren't like that are made by big corporations who only care about securing servers and kiosks, home desktops really aren't their concern.

What would you use instead?

I'm certainly not regretting disabling avahi and cups-browsed on all of my systems long ago.

Do people have printers that move around all the time?

Also, firewalls on desktops and laptops for the win, yet again.

> Do people have printers that move around all the time?

I suspect it's not the printers that are moving, but the laptops.

Fair, but do people print away from home very often? I’ve never printed anything outside of home since high school, but maybe I’m an outlier.

Maybe a better question, would intentionally adding a printer at home and a printer at the office be that large a barrier?

Maybe we wouldn't even need to drop auto discovery. Maybe it could work more like Bluetooth and only broadcast or accept connections while it was actively searching.

If you mean use someone else’s printer, I do it occasionally. Usually TTRPG character sheets. I am so happy AirPrint is common now. Makes my life easier.

If you mean send something from outside of my house to my house, I’ve done using a vpn.