Ask HN: I’m an FCC Commissioner proposing regulation of IoT security updates

Re:Ask HN: I’m an FCC Commissioner proposing regulation of I... by bewaretheirs on Tuesday September 05, 2023 @04:44PM (#37397477)

> If a producer goes out of business they should be forced to give out a signed firmware that disables the key checking, then they must put up their source code for any users who wish to build and flash it themselves.

Requiring an organization to do even a small amount of engineering as it is going under is simply not going to work in practice.

IMHO the only possible way for something like this to work is to require vendors to upload buildable firmware source into a third-party escrow system before you can ship devices to customers.

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Re:Ask HN: I’m an FCC Commissioner proposing regulation of I... by AnthonyMouse on Tuesday September 05, 2023 @05:12PM (#37397826)

Escrow doesn't really work either. You have the original code, but do you have the signing key? Is it still the correct signing key, or has an update rotated it without putting the new one in escrow? Are there different versions of the hardware that need different firmware?

The only way to know that it works is to let people install custom firmware from day one, so they can discover if they can't and raise their objections before the company is defunct.

[ Parent | on HN ]