If you suddenly can't print to your HP Printer from your Mac, you're not alone: Code security cert snafu blamed

Many Mac users today found, to their surprise, they are unable to print to their HP Inc printers. This is due to a code-signing snafu affecting macOS Catalina (version 10.15) and Mojave (10.14), specifically. HP's printer driver software is cryptographically signed with a certificate that macOS uses to determine whether the …

[WolfFan]

Epson weirdness, too

My ancient (not really, though I’m sure Epson thinks so) Work Force 3500 series MFDs are being... strange... today. Some files cannot be printed from a iOS device, some print just the first page of multi page documents, some merely take a very long time to print. Affected files include PDFs, web pages, PNGs, and JPGs. Some also have problems with macOS devices, but not with Windows.

The same items print just fine on Brother devices.

Time to retire the Epsons.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Epson weirdness, too

I'd say rather it is time to retire macOS devices...

[G Mac]

Well, some work done at least...

"Trying to continue just loops you back round to the error message, with no work done. "

Except for the fraction of a calorie you expended moving the mouse...

[six_tymes]

macs have been doing this randomly to many programs for decades.

[RM Myers]

HP and Amazon

Okay, I can understand Apple treating Amazon music as malware, since it is a competitor of Apple Music, which means it can't be trusted, just like non-Apple repair parts. But why HP printers? Is Apple getting back into the printer market? Did HP not give Apple 30% of the revenue for ink for printers connected to Apple devices?

Inquiring minds want to know, etc.

And I'm off before the pitchforks mob gets here.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: HP and Amazon

According to the article, HP asked Apple to withdraw its certificate - no blame on is Apple. Perhaps it's the ghost of Mystic Meg reeking revenge!

[Mystic Megabyte]

Re: HP and Amazon

"Perhaps it's the ghost of Mystic Meg reeking revenge!"

Hey, I'm still just about alive!

[Anonymous Coward]

Not just Apple

W10 updates screwed up printing to HP Laserjets too.

[NetBlackOps]

Re: Not just Apple

W10 update did a number on my laptop's WiFi. Thanks Microsoft.

[Some Random Kiwi]

not just the utility... installation image also borked

It's not just the signing on the application, if you try to install the HP Printer Utilities 5.1 DMG from the HP website, the installer is signed with a certificate that expired a year ago. You can tell the system to trust it... but it doesn't help -- various bits won't install because the individual executables are borked too.

[Tessier-Ashpool]

AirPrint

Your average Joe like me gets by just fine using AirPrint. Printing to one of those from a fruity thing of any kind requires no device driver installation or dedicated app. In a previous life I have horrible memories of installing hundreds of megabytes of driver and service code to get a printer up and running, with a Windows service in the background cheerfully volunteering to purchase expensive ink, and doing god knows what else to my PC like, for example, serving as an entry point for malware.

[Numpty]

Re: AirPrint

Your average joe whose printer supports AirPrint of course... many older printers, including some affected by this error, don't.

[Muscleguy]

Re: AirPrint

I have an ancient HP Laserjet and an old 2010 Macbook running Sierra. I print just fine to it using Gimp Print.

[Graham 25]

Re: AirPrint

I have an ancient Samsung printer before HP took over the business, and messed up printing on Apple.

Not quite sure what I'll do when it expires as I have found HP to be utterly useless and sent the last printer back after three days of trying to get it to work.

[IGotOut]

Re: AirPrint

You've been able use generic drivers for many printers on Windows since 95.

You'd be surprised how many printers worked with HP LaserJet 4 drivers I.e. all of them.

[Antron Argaiv]

Re: AirPrint

Now, not so much...see my post below re: LJ5 and Win10

[BebopWeBop]

And there was I thinking it was just another way that HP had come up with for extracting more money for cartridges :-)

[Strahd Ivarius]

No, they just decided that you need to go to tank printer, so you need now to buy a new printer to get the properly signed drivers

And in a while they will change their mind, bork the tank printer drivers and issue new cartridge drivers (incompatible with the current generation of cartridge printers) so you will have to buy an new printer...

Profits!

[Anonymous Coward]

Have a downvote

because what you are describing is very, very, cery close to what will happen and is clearly not a joke.

HP has transformed from a great company into a bunch of scumbags.

I'm ashamed to admit that I worked for them but at least it was before they got too far down the scumbaggery ladder.

[Anonymous Coward]

HP problems

Sounds like HP is going down the Boeing route.. ?

They were known for good quality, high reliability printers, if slightly overpriced.

If they are loosing that reliability, then they will loose the business.

[VicMortimer]

Re: HP problems

Huh? That reputation for good printers was based on hardware that was last built nearly 20 years ago.

Their reputation now is for complete garbage printers.

The old ones were built so well that most of them still work today. The newer ones are landfill.

[Anon]

Re: HP problems

"good printers ... based on hardware that was" ... made by Canon.

[Antron Argaiv]

Re: HP problems

I'm running a salvaged and repaired HP LJ5, here in the Fortress of Solitude (my basement WFH room) and it's just doing a tremendous job. Also for my wife, who's using AirPrint through my Linux system, acting as a print server for her Apple gear.

My work PC runs (corporately managed) Win10 and worked fine until a recent update replaced HP's PCL5 drivers with a newer version which, for some reason unknown to me, borks all printing to the LJ5.

And HP has scrubbed the previous version of the drivers from their website. Luckily, they are available on the Web, thanks to a kind soul who had the foresight to grab them. When the older driver is installed, the LJ5 works just fine off Win10.

I am no longer a fan of HP, and will buy nothing from them. Certainly no printers. They appear to be moving to "Printing as a Service", meaning you have to subscribe to ink deliveries, lest your cartridge "expire". LJ5's don't have that ability, thus the borkage by driver. Or, so my skeptical mind suspects.

[chivo243]

We found it early

We heard from users at 8:am here in NL on Friday. Took us a better part of the day to get to the bottom of it, as we were coming off of a two day power outage, low voltage and mid voltage gear had to be swapped of out facility, and were sure the printer issue was due to the power going from mains to UPS to generator, and back again when the job was done. We had a power cut years ago that borked a few JetDirect cards, so we were once bitten twice shy...

[Anonymous Coward]

HP

I had a fun time this week when trying to scan a document. I'd say this printer has been installed for a year, maybe used once every 2 to 3 weeks, and it's never straightforward.

HP manages to install about (checks) half a gigabyte of apps and drivers as a *minimum* and it still can't keep track of the printer that's installed. Took 30+ minutes of troubleshooting before I could scan, and it got me thinking while I clicked and sighed my way through reinstalls, how have printers remained an absolute ballache for 20+ years now? HP's "Print Doctor" diagnosed a TWAIN issue in the end (TWAIN! Still exists! Wouldn't be surprised if there was a virtual LPT1 installed too). How a non-IT literate consumer is meant to use printers is beyond me.

From what I can tell, it wants to install the printer as a cloud enabled device, and you print through that (so I can do all manner of printing away from the house presumably...). It takes all manner of arguments to persuade it to act as a local printer only.

[VicMortimer]

Re: HP

It's 2020. Why are you still buying HP printers? They've only built garbage for over a decade now.

[EBG]

Re: HP

OK - agree. But who do you recommend ?

[katrinab]

Re: HP

My Canon MF628c is working very well. Cost me £200 in the Black Friday sale in John Lewis a few years ago.

[cd]

Re: HP

Never had an issue with a Brother lase,

[Len]

Re: HP

I remember when HP drivers came on two DVDs.

[TonyR]

Re: HP

DVD's, what is that about?

https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/hp-deskjet-printer-software-850-855-1989732650

[NATTtrash]

CUPS?

Fruit isn't part of my diet, but am I mistaken when I seem to remember that CUPS works perfectly on macOS? Or doesn't that solve this issue? Or is CUPS the default printer spool anyway and is it something Apple specific that's the hindrance and messing up? Because here, on *nix with CUPS and a HP laser all is good...

[NATTtrash]

Re: CUPS?

Never mind...

Has Apple abandoned CUPS, the Linux's world's widely used open-source printing system? Seems so

After only one public Git commit this year, penguinstas think: Fork it, we don't need Cupertino

https://www.theregister.com/2020/10/15/apple_cups_develoment/

Well, that didn't take long to close that walled garden then...

[JaimieV]

Re: CUPS?

Banging the current Gutenprint bundle on solves so so many macOS printing woes. I have to use it as HP dumped macOS support for my battletank of an LJ 5N and Canon for my MP600 about four years ago, and I recommend it to anyone who has a printer in the huge supported hardware list.

[Anonymous Coward]

Past history has shown that it’s a mistake for Apple to abandon things like CUPS.

All they end up doing is making life harder for their customers, and providing MORE reasons NOT to use Apple.

We have been down this route multiple times before, and it’s always turned out badly.

[Doctor Syntax]

In this case it's HP at fault.

[Juan Inamillion]

workaround

Select generic PCL worked for my HP LaserJet 1015

[cathealer]

Re: workaround

The generic PCL worked for my HP LaserJet 2300....not sure if it will work with my veterinary management software in a network environment yet....will be testing this shortly.

[Anonymous Coward]

Solution is not to use HP s/w

Seriously -- the generic PPD works well and I have never trusted the HP-supplied stuff.

[N2]

jerry rig

You mean Dury-rig? I thought this type of error was limited to the Daily Fail

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: jerry rig

I've seen jerri rig, jerry rig and jury rig, but never dury rig.

It seems to originate from the days of sail and has nothing to do with the Daily Heil or nazism, which it seems you are implying.

[bigphil9009]

Re: jerry rig

Dury-rigging is where you hit things with rhythm sticks

[Anonymous Coward]

Malware scanners...

Though this has now been uncovered as a mistake at HP, issues with malware scanners are not uncommon. And Apple's XProtect is essentially a first line of defense rudimentary anti-malware scanner.

I used to work for one of the big AV software companies and every couple of months one of our competitors would have a PR disaster on their hands as their software had identified a vital Windows system file as malware and had quarantined or removed it. Cue headlines with hundreds of thousands or even millions of machines that would suddenly not boot any more.

Yet, nobody used this as a cheap shot at said competitor because every one knew this stuff happened and you could be next. And we were next, at some point. I forget which file it was but it was days of negative media, support departments overwhelmed and tech staff writing blog posts to explain to very novice users how to put a specific Windows system file back in a place they've never heard of before, using tools they'd never used before.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Malware scanners...

And all was absolutely and correctly blamed on the AV suppliers. If you want to be in the business of AV, you CANNOT afford false positives in any part of the automated removal process. You MUST make the quarantining or removal something the user has to decide on if your automated system isn't 100% correct.

[tip pc]

Re: Malware scanners...

HP asked Apple to revoke the cert. Apple prompts the user that the cert is expired and offers to continue, the driver then loops, likely doing its own checking against xprotect obviously failing and showing the cert issue again.

As it’s an HP driver it’s HP at fault.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Malware scanners...

I was referring to main thrust of the OPs post about AV compnaies regularly spaffing many, many users systems by mistaking crucial windows files as malware and auto-deleting/quarentining them.

[Doctor Syntax]

I can't help visualising HP's management over the past many years as being like a group of children who've wandered into a control romm full of switches and buttons which they don't understand going "I wonder what happens if we press this".

Alternatively it may be a consequence of the fact that, as most of us know, the reliability of an HP product is proportional to its age so they're trying everything they can to make it difficult to drive the older stuff because that's the only way they'll force us to replace it.

[Anonymous Coward]

So do Macs phone home to get these cert updates/revokes?

Does the OS do it all the time or is it only when you run the particular application that it goes off and checks?

I'd like to know as own a Mac and I had hoped Apple didn't get up to this MS style nonsense.

[Giles C]

Re: So do Macs phone home to get these cert updates/revokes?

I think it is when the application runs, it would be a waste of resources to check every few minutes if the application wasn’t being used.

Incidentally gatekeeper the OS X component that does the verification has been built into the operating system since 2012.

HP are the idiots to blame for this fiasco. I do have a HP printer but it is using the generic driver.

[Bridgeclip]

Re: So do Macs phone home to get these cert updates/revokes?

Try to add the printer in again. I added mine and it is working now.

[tip pc]

Re: So do Macs phone home to get these cert updates/revokes?

Max’s download updates to the following on an ad hoc basis

Xprotect

Gatekeeper

MRT

It’s not sending stuff to the cloud but downloading signatures just like an AV program would.

See Howard’s helpful explainers

https://eclecticlight.co/2020/07/19/last-week-on-my-mac-malware-detection-games/

Not sure how you’d go about stopping these updates or if you should. Certainly don’t need to pay for AV especially if running 10.15 or later.

[Anonymous Coward]

HP Printer Problem after updating to macOS 10.15.7

Recently updated to macOS 10.15.7. Now my HP 4500 does not print. The printer is older than I can remember but I deleted it from my Mac and tried to add it. Got the malware error that said it could damage my computer so I reinstall the HP drivers from HP's website. Now when I try to re-add the printer, I receive an error saying "An error occurred while trying to add the selected device. Unable to communicate with the printer at this time.

I restarted the computer and powered the printer on and off and still the same error. Any suggestions?

[Giles C]

Re: HP Printer Problem after updating to macOS 10.15.7

Ok this fixed my problem with a hp4350

Opened up and tried to print, got the error message.

Clicked show in finder.

Found the hp folder a couple of levels up from the app causing the error.

Deleted this.

Rebooted the Mac

Added a printer using the generic Apple driver it needed to do a download from Apple

Just checked and it supports the paper trays and duplexer so I am all good now.

Ymmv

[PATSYQB]

"We unintentionally revoked credentials on some older versions of Mac drivers....."

Wonder if the person responsible is looking fo a new job?

[MD Rackham]

Or got promoted into top management.

[Bostergaard]

Fixed the poroblem on my HP7740 printer - but lost a Wi-Fi channel??

Weird morning with the message that my HP was hosting malware. I tried uninstalling the driver sw and then installing the latest sw from HP - after a looooong protracted effort to locate it. Funny thing was then that the WiFi connection I use for my printer access disappeared. I was able to shift the printer to another WiFi channel and reconnect. Took most of the morning og fumbling in cyberspace.

[PStrk]

I deleted the printer from printer settings, and clicked the "Show in finder" folder, then deleted the "hp" folder under /Library/Printers/

Then I re-added it in the system preferences (NOT downloading any drivers from HP's site). It gave me a pop up that said "Drivers need to be downloaded from Apple", and then it downloaded and installed them successfully - it now prints fine and the issue is resolved.

[Bridgeclip]

They may have fixed it.

I went in this morning and added my printer and it now works just fine.

[ozarkcanoer]

Solved Codesigning error in HP Printer software

iMac 10.14.6 and HP Deskjet 6940 printer started failing in HP Utility.app with "Termination Reason: Namespace CODESIGNING, Code 0x1"

I first reset printing to delete the Deskjet 6940. Then ran ftp.hp.com/pub/softlib/software12/HP_Quick_Start/osx/Installations/Essentials/hp-printer-essentials-S-5_14_8_4.pkg . And reinstalled the Deskjet printer.

Printing via network from iMac connected to WiFi router by ethernet cable to the Deskjet also connected by ethernet to the same router worked. The printer is shared and a MacBook Air is able to also print again via WiFi.

Thanks HP for causing a working two Mac networked printing setup to go belly-up.

[elsta]

solution that worked for me

MacBook Pro Late 2016 / Catalina 10.15.7

Printer HP DeskJet 2132 (I know it's not a wireless)

This helped in my case:

1/ removed all software I installed for my HP 2 years ago

2/ removed my printer from Preferences/printers/scanners

3/ installed HP Printer Drivers v5.1 for OS X from support apple com

Started printing a document without even adding a printer. My Mac just got it all by itself.

Hope it helps.

[fabralind]

Re: solution that worked for me

This worked for me!

Thanks, elsta. :)

MacBook Pro Late 2016/ Catalina/ HP LaserJet 400 color M451dn

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm just impressed anyone can afford to print at all at the moment...

I mean, HP ink isn't exactly cheap is it?

[Ribfeast]

Had to fix this for someone last night. Moved hpdm.framework to the trash, and the OS reinstalled the driver. I then deleted and re-added the printer and all fixed.

[Deutschlander]

I am the owner of Mac Desktop, Mac watch, Two I phones, Mac Laptop

As you can see I am an admirer of Mac until today

Downloaded new version of Catalina 10.15.7

None of my HP printers will print due to PROBLEM WITH MAC SOFTWARE

HELP HELP HELP

[vence]

HP laserjet 2430 dtn

Some help with the model described??? I can only print by usb, but I need to do it by network with the rest of the computers.

Thank you

[Annker]

Nothing but problems

I have had problems on and off with my Hp printer. They always blame Apple. I spent 4 hours trying to get the printer working the other day with the help of HP tech (waited an hour for support - no call back option) At that point I could print but not scan. I was getting the "this will destroy your computer message)

The tech told me if I have any more problems I should buy another printer because this one isn't compatible with Apple. It's considered old but it works fine if only HP and Apple would get their act together. Now - 3 days after it was fixed I can't do anything. Getting an error message that says "Stopped - filter failed"

If I have to buy another printer due to their ineptitude - what would be a printer that might actually communicate and work with my MacBook?

[The Sprocket]

Re: Nothing but problems

I'd suggest Canon. I have zero problems, but you may want to check Apple support community to see if others aren't having issues with Canon. Dig around.

https://discussions.apple.com/welcome

[astrubi]

Not only with Catalina and Mojave

The same problem here (and same solution: Air Print), but with Sierra 10.12.6 in my iMac

Best,