But to serve updates via https you have to constantly keep the certifcate on internet-facing servers.
Typical organisations who need their own CA will create a root CA with a 20 to 30 year lifetime. This CA is then used to sign a sub-CA (sometimes called Principal CA, or Issuance CA), with a lifetime of 5-10 years.
The sub-CA is then used to sign a TLS cert, with a lifetime of 1-2 years.
This means that you only trust the root CA. Whether the TLS certificate gets compromised or not is irrelevant and completely besides the point, because the CA doesn't get compromised, and can revoke the compromised certificates.
I can go into detail about a few banks and governments whose CA I setup. Especially the smart card/PIN code distribution to unlock the root CA and sub-CAs was fun.
Also are there any protections against cycling them quickly (or really slowly, depending on how you look at it) to trigger seizures? Didn't someone recently get done for sending a seizure-inducing gif to an epileptic?
If someone has Epilepsy this might be a concern, but as the story around the gif sent to Kurt Eichenwald, which you reference, points out gifs don't hurt people, assholes do. It's not IKEA's responsibility to ensure that every product they sell cannot be used in any destructive manner. People have to take responsibility for purchasing and introducing new components into their home, much like I as a software developer have to take responsibility for every line of code that I write which has the potential to have a bug that compromises the system I deploy it on, or enables someone to leak the database the application is connected to. IKEA sells knives, for christ sakes.
Can these items be hijacked, what is the risk of that happening, and what is the damage they can cause?
> It's not IKEA's responsibility to ensure that every product they sell cannot be used in any destructive manner.
No, but they have a reasonable due of care.
I'm not saying that they shouldn't go on sale without the protections I mentioned. But it's surely a reasonable question to ask if those protections are in there, so as to better understand the risks.
>People have to take responsibility for purchasing and introducing new components into their home,
Yeah, but what ARE the risks? You can't answer my question, so how am I supposed to make an informed decision if I'm epileptic?
I know the balance of risks of knives. Everyone does. How many people know the potential risks of Zigbee-connected bulbs with a wifi hub?
Just saying #perspective
As you say this is dangerous but it's not as obvious how dangerous. To work with this trust anchor and keep it secur e you've now got a lot of physical and software security you now have to deal with for the next 50 years even if you stop supporting a given device. Since if anyone gets a hold of that root certificate they can all the sudden pretend to be you to everyone continuing to use your devices and you've now got a massive PR issue, if not legal liability. It's not an easy problem to deal with.