But honestly it would be pretty hard to break it beyond what a reboot would fix. Most of those embedded devices probably don't have a persistent /tmp directory

But honestly it would be pretty hard to break it beyond what a reboot would fix. Most of those embedded devices probably don't have a persistent /tmp directory and even if they did the only chance of really screwing it up would be if that 45 - 60 kb binary took up enough space to break something. It seems pretty unlikely and even then I'd consider it a net positive because then someone notices the device with root exposed to the world.