Methods of implementation and operation of hardware DRM protection on the example of printer cartridges

The subject of this paper is to analyze the way of implementation and operation of hardware DRM protection systems on the example of selected printer cartridges. Thanks to the analysis, it is possible to understand the way of operation of typical security chips used in printer cartridges. Using the knowledge gained, it becomes possible to modify the data on the security chips and thus reset the protection, so that the printer sees the chip with the modified data as a new one. However, the process itself was difficult due to the lack of publicly available materials on this topic. In this paper, different approaches to DRM security analysis have been used, so that the reader can try to perform the described steps to analyze other hardware DRM systems by himself. In addition, devices called resetters have been designed and fabricated to quickly reset the analyzed security chips. Their design and documentation is available on the author's Github.