Instruments like this normally boot from a read only image, so even if you have root access to the box you can't do anything bad to it, well, nothing that won't

Instruments like this normally boot from a read only image, so even if you have root access to the box you can't do anything bad to it, well, nothing that won't disappear on reboot. On my Siglent scope (an SDS2104X plus) you can easily hack it to enable telnet access. This requires physical access to the device to add a USB stick with a file on it to achieve this, but it's then very open (described here https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/siglent-sds2000x-plus-coming/825/ https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/siglent-sds2000x-plus...) It was actually one of the things that attracted me to this scope, that it was to some extent hackable. Compared to other scopes like the old Tektronix ones running VxWorks it's nice to have something familiar behind the scenes.