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"Allowing updates without signature" isn't the same as forbidding the owner from applying updates. Whoever buys a device has the right to decide what updates a
by MereInterest 5y ago
"Allowing updates without signature" isn't the same as forbidding the owner from applying updates. Whoever buys a device has the right to decide what updates are applied to the device. This isn't incompatible with requiring signed updates. It is incompatible with the manufacturer being the holder of the private keys, and rightly so, as having the ability to modify the running code is the true definition of hardware ownership.
- groby_b 5y ago"This client builds embedded devices found in offices around the world. [...] These devices are driven by firmware running on a microcontroller that delivers robust wireless communications" Roughly none of the clients buying that kind of hardware want to install their own code. Come off your high horse - turnkey solutions are desirable for a large number of devices. And "hardware ownership" is not a sufficient enough proxy to allow firmware updates. Anybody in an office standing next to the device can exert physical ownership, and that's exactly the case you want to prevent.
- MereInterest 5y agoPhysical access is not ownership. A turnkey solution can provide reasonable defaults, along with the information needed to assert ownership and override those defaults.
- car_analogy 5y ago> Anybody in an office standing next to the device can exert physical ownership, and that's exactly the case you want to prevent. You mean like with a user/owner-set password? The kind you use to unlock your computer at startup? Why is it any time manufacturer lockdown solves a security issue, people rush to pretend that only manufacturer lockdown can solve it, even when user-freedom-respecting solutions to the same issue are not only possible, but widely used and predate the lockdown solution?