CLOVER’s JIM CERKLESKI WEIGHS IN ON TONER BOMB TO FOXNEWS
A
used toner cartridge could easily be modified into a bomb, a printer
expert told FoxNews.com, underscoring fears that a mysterious object
discovered in an air cargo shipment making its way from Yemen to the
U.S. was intended as a terrorist attack.
Federal authorities
shepherded airplanes into New York’s JFK and investigated suspicious
packages on UPS planes at two U.S. airports in response to the discovery
of suspicious packages found Thursday night in Dubai and England.One of
the packages contained an object described as a clear cartridge with
wires coming out, and authorities speculated that it could be a toner
cartridge that had been manipulated. John Shane, an expert on all things
printers, agreed.”I’m not sure that it’s any different for a toner
cartridge than for any other product,” Shane, director of the
communication supplies consulting service with market research firm
InfoTrends, told FoxNews.com, noting that “you could take apart a
notebook PC or you could take apart a can of coffee.”
Anything
could be used as the shell for a bomb, in other words. But toner
cartridges are an interesting choice, since there’s an entire industry
designed around remanufacturing them.”There’s an industry designed
around taking apart toner cartridges and replacing the old toner with
new toner,” Shane pointed out, meaning they’re easy to gain access to —
even in Yemen, the reported source of the terror packages. “There’s a
global trade in empty toner cartridges,” Shane told FoxNews.com.
Jim
Cerkleski, chief executive officer of Clover Technologies Group, the
global leader in remanufacturing cartridges, said the circuit board seen
in grainy images taken of the reported explosive device “looks nothing
like anything inside a toner or ink cartridge … clearly looked like a
remanufactured system.”He said it looked like a model originally made by
Brother or HP.Shane wasn’t sure.”I can’t tell if it’s HP or Lexmark or
Xerox or Brother — it looks like a regular office laser cartridge,” he
said.
Representatives from the major printer manufacturers —
including Hewlett Packard, Canon, and Epson — declined to speculate on
the device.As to reports that the cartridge contained a white powder
rather than the black toner that would be expected, Shane said it was
hard to say conclusively that it was evidence of a bomb. During the
remanufacturing process, a white powder is sometimes introduced, he
said.”There’s something called packing powder that’s used to make sure
that it’s done properly.”Shane said that circuit boards similar to the
one seen in the pictures of the device are quite common, even one as
shabby as that seen here. During the printer remanufacturing process,
Shane said, it’s not uncommon for a remanufacturer to replace the board
with a third-party one to avoid copyright issues.”Original toner
cartridges come with chips that help them do all kinds of things,” Shane
said. “It’s not at all uncommon for there to be chips in toner
cartridge.” Such chips, and the printed circuit boards holding them,
talk to the printer, count pages, know when there’s a problem, and even
detect when components are wearing down to adjust voltages to keep parts
functioning properly.”Some remanufactured toner cartridges could easily
have as crude a circuit board as that picture I saw,” Shane said.