They are in a -lot- of edge devices. They became popular with DIY because they were a very cheap and capable option with the esp8266, which hackers converted fr

They are in a -lot- of edge devices. They became popular with DIY because they were a very cheap and capable option with the esp8266, which hackers converted from ultracheap UART to WiFi modules into general purpose mcus. They became the DIY default because instead of ignoring this, they embraced it and published specs and translated data sheets. Their diy friendly approach has garnered them a ton of software support and publicity. They have responded very openly by publishing the vendor specific diagnostic commands. This whole dog and pony show is very unfortunate, really, since the irresponsible security firm used the term backdoor in a completely inappropriate and misleading way, and the blogosphere and tech press just parroted their claim without bothering to read the disclosure, apparently. The headlines should have been: “Security firm Tarlogic makes specious “backdoor” claim at rootCon about popular Bluetooth/Wifi microcontroller deployed in billions of devices.”