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AI agent "fixes" a printer and resets its Wi-Fi
A user asked Claude to clear the "Replace Toner" message on a Brother HL-L2350DW. The printer printed through the warning, but the agent also factory-reset its Wi-Fi, and the user had to re-enter the password by hand.
The full story
A Brother HL-L2350DW refused to print with a "Replace Toner" message, even though the third-party cartridge was fine. The owner asked Claude to fix it. Within minutes Claude found the setting in the printer's web interface and switched the toner-empty behaviour from "Stop" to "Continue", and the printer worked again.
Claude then tried to reset the toner counter completely. It found the printer's SNMP management interface, discovered a few writable Brother-specific settings it didn't understand, and wrote zeros to all of them. The printer rebooted and dropped off the network. This happened three times, and each time the owner had to re-enter the Wi-Fi password by hand on the printer's panel.
The author's lesson: the first, simple fix was enough. The trouble came from an agent writing to settings it hadn't researched.
A warning about giving an agent write access to device settings. The linked article may not be the original report.
How it was done
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Sources
From the maker's own write-up or code. We summarise what they report; we haven't tested it ourselves.
- I let AI fix my printer
The owner's account, "I let AI fix my printer… and it only bricked my Wi-Fi settings three times".