News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Research shows how MacBook Webcams can spy on their users without warning. Parent comment

Re:Research shows how MacBook Webcams can spy on their users... by nexttimer on Wednesday December 18, 2013 @04:49PM (#6931086)
It's a dig at anything closed.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Research shows how MacBook Webcams can spy on their users... by superuser2 on Wednesday December 18, 2013 @05:26PM (#6931331)
Why would open source hardware not be vulnerable to this sort of attack?
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Research shows how MacBook Webcams can spy on their users... by jdiez17 on Wednesday December 18, 2013 @07:13PM (#6932001)
Two reasons:

First: peer review. If your design documents are readily available, researchers don't have to reverse engineer them. Also, by open sourcing hardware design you lower the bar for critique: you might get feedback from an experienced electrical engineer who might not know how to write and upload a custom firmware for a USB controller.

Second: you can easily change it because it's not a black box.

[ Parent | on HN ]