There's a technical existence proof of a secure architecture for problematic IoT hardware, from Microsoft (of all places) Azure Sphere, with a Mediatek MCU base

There's a technical existence proof of a secure architecture for problematic IoT hardware, from Microsoft (of all places) Azure Sphere, with a Mediatek MCU based on Pluton (from Xbox and Ryzen). It has hardware separation of security-critical software (Linux Kernel) from IoT application software, allowing each to be updated independently, even if the device vendor goes out of business or cannot afford to invest in security in the first place. If the security properties of the Azure Sphere design could be generalized beyond Microsoft/AMD/Mediatek by Arm or RISC-V, so that OSS software like Debian or Zephyr could be used in the security-critical hardware compartment, we could have a vendor-neutral starting point for sustainable, low-cost, networked devices sold and supportable by multiple vendors. https://www.platformsecuritysummit.com/2019/speaker/seay https://www.platformsecuritysummit.com/2019/speaker/seay Further down the road, CHERI capabilities may be a silver bullet, but we're still years away from affordable hardware.