HP Universal Print Driver GPO deployment

September 2021

Point and Print refers to the capability of allowing a user on a Windows 2000 and later client to create a connection to a remote printer without providing disks or other installation media. All necessary files and configuration information are automatically downloaded from the print server to the client.

Microsoft has been battling a set of vulnerabilities, known as "PrintNightmare", which began life as an accidentally disclosed zero-day at the end of June and permitted an attacker to run arbitrary code on Windows with SYSTEM privileges. A flaw in the Windows Printer Spooler service allowed miscreants to potentially run riot on exposed systems.

For the last couple of months Miicrosoft released a series of patches that haven't really fixed the issues. Now, the company has announced that it's going to require users to have Administrator privileges to add or update printers for use by Windows.

For most individual Windows users, the change will mean having to click on some prompts to gain elevated privileges in order to add or update printers, but it may be more troublesome for enterprise scenarios where users run in Standard mode without access to Admin privileges.

Having initially told users to shut down Print Spooler, Microsoft's latest missive means it will require administrator privileges for Point and Print driver installation, a change that will hit all supported versions of Windows and turned up in this week's round of patches.