Security and Cheap Complexity

I’ve been saying that complexity is the worst enemy of security for a long time now. (Here’s me in 1999.) And it’s been true for a long time.

In 2018, Thomas Dullien of Google’s Project Zero talked about “cheap complexity.” Andrew Appel summarizes:

The anomaly of cheap complexity. For most of human history, a more complex device was more expensive to build than a simpler device. This is not the case in modern computing. It is often more cost-effective to take a very complicated device, and make it simulate simplicity, than to make a simpler device. This is because of economies of scale: complex general-purpose CPUs are cheap. On the other hand, custom-designed, simpler, application-specific devices, which could in principle be much more secure, are very expensive.

This is driven by two fundamental principles in computing: Universal computation, meaning that any computer can simulate any other; and Moore’s law, predicting that each year the number of transistors on a chip will grow exponentially. ARM Cortex-M0 CPUs cost pennies, though they are more powerful than some supercomputers of the 20th century.

The same is true in the software layers. A (huge and complex) general-purpose operating system is free, but a simpler, custom-designed, perhaps more secure OS would be very expensive to build. Or as Dullien asks, “How did this research code someone wrote in two weeks 20 years ago end up in a billion devices?”

This is correct. Today, it’s easier to build complex systems than it is to build simple ones. As recently as twenty years ago, if you wanted to build a refrigerator you would create custom refrigerator controller hardware and embedded software. Today, you just grab some standard microcontroller off the shelf and write a software application for it. And that microcontroller already comes with an IP stack, a microphone, a video port, Bluetooth, and a whole lot more. And since those features are there, engineers use them.

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Posted on August 26, 2022 at 6:54 AM • 34 Comments

Comments

Q • August 26, 2022 7:10 AM

“… if you wanted to build a refrigerator you would create custom refrigerator controller hardware and embedded software.”

What? No. You build a compressor and attach a thermostat. There is no need for software in there. It’s just a refrigerator, it just refrigerates. It doesn’t need to compute anything.

AlanS • August 26, 2022 8:27 AM

@Q

You build a compressor and attach a thermostat. There is no need for software in there. It’s just a refrigerator, it just refrigerates. It doesn’t need to compute anything.

Well exactly but in your dreams and mine. I bought a new refrigerator a couple of years ago. This was to replace one that had failed after 15 years of use. The salesman asked what I wanted. I said I didn’t care for fancy features, I just wanted something that worked (i.e. refrigerated) and would be reliable enough that it would last at least as long as the old one. Bear in mind that the old one failing after 15 years compared badly to the simple one I bought in 1994 that now sits in the garage, has never been repaired or serviced, and will probably continue to work reliably for another decade or more. The salesman just laughed and said they all come with fancy features and that if I got 8 years of life out of any of them I should count myself lucky. The options were one piece of fancy junk or another and they were all seriously expensive. The most important criteria when buying one of these monsters are: will someone be available to service it when it breaks (and it will break) and will they be able to get parts? After a few weeks the ice maker broke. I say broke but it is so badly designed you can’t imagine it working for any sustained period of time. It was ‘repaired’ but it still doesn’t work properly. I believe there is a class action against the large international corporation that made this junk but the company clearly couldn’t care less as they have made multiple generations with essentially the same faulty design.

Rob K • August 26, 2022 8:40 AM

“it’s easier to build complex systems than it is to build simple ones”

I think this is better stated as it’s easier to re-use existing complex systems than it is to build simple ones from scratch

K.S. • August 26, 2022 8:56 AM

@AlanS

I think disposable nature of modern janky consumer electronics is orthogonal to complexity. It is very unlikely that ice maker in your new refrigerator failed due to anything related to controls or software but due to cheap plastic part somewhere prematurely failing as the result of deficient QC.

Leon Theremin • August 26, 2022 9:12 AM

microcontroller already comes with … a whole lot more

For CPUs, that lot more includes a built-in covert radio that lets Silicon Valley’s sponsored terrorists have complete control of any device that is powered on independently of Operating System’s defenses.

This won’t be solved and privacy/security regained without a war. These terrorists use directed energy weaponry to harass and sabotage anyone who is seriously working to create secure devices.

tfb • August 26, 2022 9:18 AM

@Q: except that, for instance, people like to know whether the fridge has ever been warm so they can avoid the whole dying of food-poisoning thing, and they like it if the fridge defrosts itself automatically, and they like to know if something fails, and, and, and.

So you could design and build a special bit of electronics which did all those things. Or you could write a program, and when you write the program you could either write it for some little 8-bit embedded microcontroller and have to worry about all the I/O &c or you could just say, no, let’s just use some general-purpose thing with a whole framework we don’t need to write, and so it goes on, and pretty soon you’ve got a Linux kernel in there.

Loyd • August 26, 2022 9:21 AM

@ Q,

What? No. You build a compressor and attach a thermostat. […] There is no need for software in there. It’s just a refrigerator, it just refrigerates

Not quite. For the last 50 years or so, basically all full-size home refrigerators will self-defrost their freezer periodically. (The feature was invented in the 1920s but took a while to become popular. I had a circa-2005 bar-fridge that still didn’t have it, and ice would just grow and grow in its tiny freezer until I’d unplug it, empty it, and manually melt it—pretty inconvenient.)

Historically they’ve just used a timer to turn a heater on and off. With no knowledge of temperature or ice levels, they might melt too much or not enough, so I could see a small microcontroller being helpful. I suppose they could also help in managing temperature zones, by controlling fans and/or dampers between zones—most commonly between the freezer and main section, for fridges that have separate settings for each.

Why any user would want a full operating system in there, I have no idea. But marketers have long been coming up with far-fetched ideas for computer interfaces on the outside of the door, e.g. cameras or barcode scanners to see what’s inside. These days they’d likely be talking about smartphone apps—check your fridge from the grocery store. With complexity being cheap, as the story says, switching from a 5-cent to 50-cent microcontroller might give them the ability to actually do all that stuff nobody wants. IP stack, wifi module, camera interface…

0805 • August 26, 2022 9:33 AM

…and then someone writes simple single-purpose encryption code for his application and gets shouted at for being stupid to do so.

On the other hand embedding a full-fledged web browser just in order to display a gui is opening a big attack surface…

John tillotson • August 26, 2022 9:54 AM

A problem is that there is no incentive anywhere in the supply chain from parts manufacturer to assembler to vendor to actually implement the security that should be put in place to protect the safety, privacy, and rights of the consumer.

The fact that “all” refrigerators on the market follow the same model of “cheap and non-durable hardware” with “insecure software written without security” is telling: Why do consumers put up with this?

I know that Bruce Schneier has been attempting to educate the public for many years with his books and talks: Perhaps it’s time to require a course in public schools to teach the basics of cyber security and how the current “surveillance capitalism” really works.

Maybe this could happen right after they start teaching civics again… (Sigh.)

David Leppik • August 26, 2022 12:09 PM

If you try to build a web app these days, one of the most common frameworks is React.js. If you install it, it comes with every bell and whistle the developers at Meta think you might want. It’s a tangle of open source libraries, often poorly maintained, sometimes pulling in a library to do one simple calculation. For the longest time, they didn’t even bother to security audit these dependencies. After getting bitten a few too many times, they now check for security updates, but of course the volunteers writing most of these dependencies don’t audit before deploying.

Not every web framework is like that, but more often than not that’s the case.

The overall complexity issue is everywhere, and it’s hardly new. Until Java 9, if you wanted to do anything in Java, you had to get the whole thing, including CORBA, a remote procedure service that the web made obsolete. Of course, at least Java had security audits.

Quantry • August 26, 2022 12:26 PM

@ tfb, regarding food poisoning,

There are $5 indicators that can sense temperature that tell of exposure to extreme temperatures. ‘https://www.labelmaster.com/shop/shipping/damage-indicators

The most subversive “planned obsolescence” in fridge tech was placing the condenser at floor level, and sucking fuzz thru it many times a day, which NO ONE EVER CLEANS: A perfect example of needless complexity, and guaranteed to HALVE the service life, increase power consumption, noise, food poisoning…

Also folks, dealing with frost never required seduction-by-micro-chip.

Frankly IMO, Bruce has this right.

“complexity is the worst enemy of security”

AKA, “Keep It Simple Stupid”

lurker • August 26, 2022 1:06 PM

@tfb, “… and pretty soon you’ve got a Linux kernel in there.”

No, no, no … Why is there a flying circus Linux kernel in my fridge? when it only needs a microkernel with dynamicaly loaded drivers for only the sensors and motors actually in the beast.

A: the design engineers were not educated to think about the task in front of them. They were educated to grab something off the shelf and jam it in there. And the things on the shelf are built to be jammed in anywhere and everywhere.

EvilKiru • August 26, 2022 2:44 PM

@John: “toggling switch up turns on light, down turns off light.”

Unfortunately, that’s not universally true.

There are entire countries where it’s exactly the opposite.

And if you have a three-way light control, so you can turn the lights on and off from two different doorways, the orientation can be effectively random and depends on which switch you last used.

Clive Robinson • August 26, 2022 2:48 PM

@ ALL,

“… and pretty soon you’ve got a Linux kernel in there.”

The question people are asking is,

“Why?”

And the answer is kind of sad realy.

When you develop embeded systems the usual process is to,

1, Draw up a specification.
2, Analyze the specification
3, Draw up a basic requirments
4, Draw up resorce requirments

Then go looking for a microcontroler that gives you the resources you need with minimal exyetnal circuitry. Especially keep analogue circuitry to a minimum.

When you find an appropriate microcontroler if you’ve not already got one you aquire a “Developmebt system” from the chip supplier / manufacturer.

With such a development system you get support tools.

Back in the 1980’s you got little more than a PC / MS DOS based set of software that talked via the serial port to the development board and in the later 80’s an assembler.

In the 90’s others started to supply C compilers and other higher level languages like Forth but they came at a hefty price.

By the late 90’s the GNU C compiler was being used by chip manufacturers as a “give away” tool chain.

As 8bit and even 16bit microcontrolers had gone out of fashion and 32bit microcontrolers became sub $5 and people wanted “displays” better than their bedside clock, the chip manufacturers upped what they were sort of giving away.

But unnoticed by many these give-aways became compulsory…

That is if you wanted any kind of support from the chip Tech Support you had to be using what they were using.

At the turn of the century even 32Bit microcontrolers stopped being made… We had entered the age of “Systems ona Chip”(SoC). SoCs had high end hardware built in like multiple SPI controlers that could also do USB, and most of the chip level protocols, not just the low end I2C bus but the likes of CAN bus. Shortly after that network hardware was added and you just needed maybe ten external components to have a full 100MBit ethernet interface.

Unless you’ve ever written a full network stack from scratch, you’ve probably little idea of just what is involved, and how “flaky” it can be.

So when a chip manufacturer supplies the full stack on the CD that comes with the development board you know that you are going to use it.

Thus the wheel turns a little further and more high level peripherals get added… This is where “propriatary interfaces” started geting NDA’s and other “legal handcuffs”. In part because the SoC chip carried way way more hardware than you would be aware of from all vut the highest end chip.

Basically the manufacture only made the highest end SoC chips, they would then package them up and sometimes not connect pins so functionality was not available.

One company with a degree of noteriety in this area is Broadcom. They have all sorts of highlevel and speciallized peripherals on their SoC’s, that you do not get to know about…

If you doubt this go look up the early days of the Raspberry Pi and how the chip they used had way more on it that information slowly leaked out about.

By this time the “Internet of Things”(IoT) had got going and basically you were getting the equivalent of a Micro-Vax on a chip along with a full *nix OS and fully developed drivers.

You just had to port across your App.

But you had no choice about writing your own code… Chip manufacturers have left the 1990’s and earlier long long in the dust and don’t want to go back there.

So you more or less have no choice, just go with a $2 SoC with better than high end 80’s minicomputer performance and a full OS and tool chain or go with an effectively obsolete 8 or 16 bit chip that costs the same, needs more external hardware and with tools that have not seen any work on them since before you were in college. Worse they have little or no support…

Oh and you can bet your Friday Night Beer spend, that the Marketing Dept will want bells, whistles, and Santa’s little helpers all tucked into the project because that’s how marketing people make salary plus.

SpaceLifeForm • August 26, 2022 2:48 PM

@ Loyd, Q

re: Defrost Timers

They are likely to fail before you would expect. This applies to large commercial freezers too.

Preferably, you want a mechanical defrost timer, not an electronic based one. KISS.

Not long ago, I had to defrost a frost-free freezer. Over 10 years old. Turns out it was not the defrost timer failing as I suspected, but apparently just too much heat and humidity in the location. Defrosted, checked coils, but they were clean. Pulled it back away from the wall a bit, better airflow, no problems.

Over time, every time you shut the door, you may be pushing it closer to the back wall. Road creep.

Clive Robinson • August 26, 2022 3:13 PM

@ SpaceLifeForm, Loyd, Q,

Re : Star / efficiency Ratings

Pulled it back away from the wall a bit, better airflow, no problems.

Ever heard about “Freezers” needing hot house conditions to freeze?

Basically to get a good “Star Rating” the range of ambient tempratures a fridge-freezer will work in goes down…

A few years back Bosch were selling A+ rated fridge-freezers but if the ambient temprature was below,18-20C they stopped freezing so your freezer was not even as cold as the fridge (which is anoying if you have near a $1000 of prime food in there)

Now in the US in Alaska come winter they push their freezers outdoors to save on energy bills, well obviously you can not do that with a Bosch…

I have my home heating at 14C during the winter as the saving is very large.

A friend likewise, but their brand new Bosch was not playing… The service guy came around and swapped the CPU board which effectively downgraded it to a C energy rating, but even that did not make the freezer reliable. Eventually I made my friend a little contraption using a 40Watt incandescent light bulb and put it ontop of the pump motor unit.

It makes the freezer reliable, but they’ve only one spare bulb left and due to legislation you just can not buy incandescent bulbs on the high street any longer[1].

So I’ve had to source some resistive “heating tape” of the sort you run down a copper water pipe, under the insulation.

Yes I know, it’s insane that you have to heat a fridge freezer to get it to freeze…

[1] Not quite true… You can still get some but in “Pet Shops” for those people who keep lizards and the like. But the bulbs are quite expensive.

Loyd • August 26, 2022 7:12 PM

@ Clive Robinson,

It makes the freezer reliable, but they’ve only one spare bulb left and due to legislation you just can not buy incandescent bulbs on the high street any longer

Are oven and refrigerator bulbs not exempt from this in your location? In Canada, they tend to be 40-watt incandescents with the “normal” E26 base that fits most ceiling and desk lamps. They’re easily obtained; dollar stores sell them at the obvious price.

Other exemptions are, or were, 3-way bulbs and any old stock. People often donate unused bulbs to thrift stores, and until the government makes my landlord replace the resistive electric heating, there’s little reason not to use them in winter.

Ted • August 26, 2022 10:48 PM

Very congruous essay and talk. It’s amazing that close to 20 years separates them, but that complexity’s effect on security remains forefront in the minds of security engineers.

Appel’s post – especially the excerpt on the layers of software in a computer voting system – is another great illustration of this complexity.

Dullien’s talk is a really interesting one to revisit this week, with its particular focus on CPUs. I might add I had no idea how many CPUs were in products, nor how cheap they are. I see that POTUS signed an EO yesterday to begin implementing the CHIPS Act. It’s crazy that the issue of just having chips could also play into this ecosystem.

garabaldi • August 26, 2022 11:04 PM

@ Q, et. al.

What? No. You build a compressor and attach a thermostat. […] There is no need for software in there. It’s just a refrigerator, it just refrigerates

You can improve efficiency and get better performance at a wide range of ambient temperatures using a variable speed motor and variable expansion orifice. Good luck getting that to work without a micro controller or software.

Denton Scratch • August 27, 2022 4:05 AM

@Loyd

switching from a 5-cent to 50-cent microcontroller

Thing is, my recent experience with white goods is that as aften as not it’s the controller board that’s failed. “No problem!”, I hear you cry; “Microcontrollers are cheap, just replace it”.

So why do replacement controller boards come in at over £100?

AlanS • August 27, 2022 9:11 AM

@K.S.

I am willing to grant that you may be partially correct. I suspect it is a combination of the two. The manufacturer’s ice maker repair kit includes a replacement control board.

My recent experience with all sorts of appliances including washing machines, driers, dish washers, stoves, and most recently a gas furnace, is that more often or not the fix involves replacing a control board, often large expensive ones.

Also I think Bruce’s point is because you have a fancy board that supports all sorts of functions the engineers design and build a more complex machine:

And that microcontroller already comes with an IP stack, a microphone, a video port, Bluetooth, and a whole lot more. And since those features are there, engineers use them.

Clive Robinson • August 27, 2022 9:30 AM

@ Denton Scratch, Loyd, ALL,

“So why do replacement controller boards come in at over £100?”

It’s all the steps in the supply chain with each one making atleast a 30% markup where they can, and the closer they are to you the more like 500% or more.

Think of it like compound interest from a loan shark…

Oh and don’t think you can go direct to the manufacturer, most places they have “tied agreements” with the middle men, and you are just “chum on the side of the shark pool”…

Given the low cost of buying an entire new fridge freezer compared to the cost of repair, your most sensible choice if it’s out of guarantee is to scrap and buy new… Just don’t think about the environmental damage, the fridge freezer and other white goods manugacturers certainly don’t.

Supposadly we have WEEE legislation, but that’s been turned into anothet “profit center”…

AlanS • August 27, 2022 10:38 AM

@Denton Scratch, Clive

Only £100? That’s cheap and if you don’t do it yourself, add the labor cost as well.

As Clive, points out, if it is not under warranty, in many cases it will be more cost effective to replace the entire appliance. The mark up on parts is crazy. The stove in my son’s apartment has a broken burner knob at the moment. There is a small piece of metal inside it that is missing or broken. A replacement knob costs over $100. When I was on the manufacturer’s website you could click on different parts and determine their cost. The main control board was $230 (£195), a real bargain given that they had single screws listed for $20. It may be time to improvise.

Loyd • August 27, 2022 11:31 AM

@ Denton Scratch,

Thing is, my recent experience with white goods is that as aften as not it’s the controller board that’s failed. “No problem!”, I hear you cry; “Microcontrollers are cheap, just replace it”.

I’m certainly not saying “no problem”. A fridge should give decades of trouble-free operation (and, luckily, that’s been my family’s experience; a relative had a circa-1970 fridge repaired once in the ’90s, it’s been fine otherwise, and nobody else has ever lost food due to failure).

As Clive hints at, there’s greed all around, and environmental legislation is often little more than greenwashing. Maybe the government says somebody has to take away your old fridge when it breaks. But they don’t say somebody has to fix your fridge for free if it breaks before 20 years. Or that they have to provide schematics (like most pre-1980 appliances and electronics) and standard microcontroller sockets and free/libre firmware to ensure there’s a robust competitive market for repairs. Regulators should be doing all of that and more (like, get rid of this bullshit where every brand of power tool has an incompatible pack of 18650 cells; make landlords eat the costs of bad insulation and inefficient heaters; etc.). Instead they meekly accept the false narrative that nobody could compete under those conditions, using import tariffs is out of the question, and we’d be back to 1970s prices if they had to meet 1970s expectations.

Microcontrollers are cheap. If appliance manufacturers can’t make them last the expected lifetime of the appliance, make them ship one or more spares in the package.

Clive Robinson • August 27, 2022 12:24 PM

@ AlanS,

Re : Little piece of metal.

“The stove in my son’s apartment has a broken burner knob at the moment. There is a small piece of metal inside it that is missing or broken.”

The “gas stove” in my kitchen some quater century ago developed a falut in that the oven would nolonger work.

The gas pilot would light and a little gas would come through in the burner but very little so it would not even get to half a gas mark temprature wise

The reason was the “safety feature” of a thermocouple on the burner. The idea being that not enough gas would flow if you stuck your head in the oven to kill yourself[1].

Because the thermocouple had been quite deliberately placed in the wrong place in the burner flame it had been physically burnt through.

I tried to get a replacment and was basically told they could only be sold to “Corgi Registered Gas Fitters who had passed the manufacturers course” so yeh a bill of £200 at least on an already decade and a half old appliance. Sadly the scrap appliance breaker up the road from me did not have any of the right sort at the time. So I thought about it for oh I don’t know maybe 30secs and went home and took the valve the thermocouple controlled out, striped it down and swapped the diaphragm and close spring around so the spring kept it open rather than closed re-greased and reassembled the valve and put it back and the oven still works fine.

I guess you could say it was an “out of warranty repair” but it’s now into it’s fifth decade of working and may out live me so… Not my care 😉

[1] This sort of safety feature hails from the days of “Town Gas” that was finally phased out of the UK in the 1970’s and replaced with natural gas. Whilst town gas being carbon monoxide will kill you fairly easily it’s not so easy with natural gas especially with what else they add. So as I’m not the sort to try to kill myself that way any way this safety feature was a bit pointless.

Jon • August 28, 2022 12:22 AM

@ Freezers failing: Old trick was to put a penny (any small coin) on top of an ice cube. If it’s found on the bottom of the ice cube, well, the “penny dropped” – and you know at some point your freezer failed, even if everything’s fully frozen now. J.

PS- I put mechanical thermometers in my ~30yr. old fridge, mostly as a warning for when the auto-defrost isn’t working and it needs a manual defrost [which it does now and then]. They’re wonderfully cheap and cheerful – much better than the electronic ones I was using. J.

JonKnowsNothing • August 28, 2022 8:30 AM

@All

re: Ice Maker & Water Dispenser (cold hot)

These are on the top of the list of items to fail thus generating major revenue for the fixit divisions.

Best thing you can do is get a fridge without these features. You can replicate the feature easily with an ice cube tray and a pitcher of water. Since you will regain a good amount of interior freezer space the ice cube tray is a fair trade off.

A secondary item is that the water lines will leak and you will have water dripping or flowing along the backside of the fridge for days-months before you realize that you have a leak. The water is wicked up the wall board and adjacent cabinet sides and you might not notice the veneer warping off the obscured side.

The repair cost is Not Cheap (1).

If you have control over the floor plan of the kitchen, a drain and slope to the floor would prevent the damage to the walls, floors and cabinets but nearly no one has such control and builders boggle at the thought of a home having the same drain system as a restaurant. (2)

Ditching the water lines completely can save big $$$.

If you really need automated ice dispenser, buy a stand alone ice maker. You get faster turnaround on the ice, bigger ice storage bin, and the advantage of decoupled process.

===

1) Yes, btdt and had $$$ repairs. If you are really unlucky you get Black Mold which in my area can mean major repairs costs or even total tear downs of the house. The house can be declared Non-Inhabitable and thus not salable.

2) A home kitchen is not that much different than a commercial kitchen in functionality. The difference is in the size of the appliances and a lot more 220 outlets. The similarity is they both produce food for consumption but somehow home food production gets less a “sanitary design”.

JonKnowsNothing • August 28, 2022 8:59 AM

@All

re: Microcontrollers in Fridges and Freezers

There is a Grand Scheme underway to monitor the contents of the fridge and freezer by the I(DI)OT groups. I don’t recall all the different agencies involved but it’s a combination of the manufactures and food producers.

With RFID (active/passive) and BTLE tech, they can scan the contents of your fridge, freezer and kitchen cupboards to see Sell By Dates and Contents.

This will build a profile of the kind of food you buy, when you buy it (tracked to the store of purchase), how quickly you consume the food, leading to all sorts of interesting AI analysis of your eating habits.

One of the consumer pros touted for this, is that you will get (yeta)Notification that something is about to go off in the fridge or in the cupboard. In theory, so that you will use it rather than toss it. However, if you haven’t eaten it before it’s gone bad, you probably aren’t that interested in eating what’s in the bottom of the jar.

The Save-The-Food people are also interested in informing you that you didn’t finish eating the “Big Box Store Lifetime Supply of Pudding Cups” which has a Good Until Date somewhat near that of a Twinkie (1).

Other I(DI)OT items planned are PUSH recipes for what you have in the fridge. This is similar to the options on recipe sites that have an “add these items to your grocery list” option for the ingredients listed to make the meal. Some of those auto-add-its have scaling options for the number of dishes to be prepared. So, the Recipe-AI will scan what you have on-hand and then prepare a meal plan for you or order what’s needed.

The same idea is in the wings for your clothing and seasonal adjustments. Need a winter coat? The Clothing-AI will tell you to when it’s time to buy one. Wearing a summer white suit? The Clothing-AI will tell you that after September Labor Day, to pack that thing away.

===

1 Twinkie defense

Loyd • August 28, 2022 11:20 AM

@ JonKnowsNothing,

If you have control over the floor plan of the kitchen, a drain and slope to the floor would prevent the damage to the walls, floors and cabinets but nearly no one has such control and builders boggle at the thought of a home having the same drain system as a restaurant.

It boggles my mind that the builders of residential highrises don’t do this for kitchens and bathrooms. Occasionally they’ll do it for a utility room, especially if there’s a hot water tank. But if a bathroom above you floods, you’ll find no shortage of forum threads online talking about whether it’s the building management, the leaker, or the leakee that has to make an insurance claim. Plumbers don’t even do anything to make the leaks obvious, like putting a piece of thin (noisy when dripped on) metal below valves; I’ve seen five levels affected by one leak above.

At least builders aren’t putting many “smart”/”connected” devices into residences yet. Maybe a fancy thermostat, but those are standard and take 5 minutes to replace. Your builder-grade stuff’s gonna destroy itself, not be ransomwared.

Brenden Walker • August 29, 2022 10:44 AM

As an engineer (software and hardware), in my experience the driving force has always been marketing. Once they learn you can cloud connect everything, they’ll want it in your bidet and sensors monitoring …uh..everything.

Over the years I’ve tried to fight complexity, with very little success. It seems that most people are willing to give up security for the most trivial of banal ‘convenience’…

Jesse Thompson • August 29, 2022 6:33 PM

@lurker

Why is there a flying circus Linux kernel in my fridge? when it only needs a microkernel with dynamically loaded drivers for only the sensors and motors actually in the beast.

I don’t know.
Why did you need a flying circus Linux/BSD kernel to post this comment?
You could have simply used a microcontroller that handles TCP network stack, keyboard, and vt100 terminal.

Instead you’re doing nothing more than tapping out a comment while an entire operating system is juggling printing subsystems, kerning fonts, 3D-accellerating 2D boxes to draw around your text, and swapping RAM out to disk because the 32-128 thousand million bytes of it that you have still somehow got full.

Of course I’m making leaps of assumption like “you’re not running Windows” and “you’re not typing this on your iPhone” and a plethora of other overtures that are all ultimately in your favor anyway.

me • August 30, 2022 10:03 PM

And that microcontroller already comes with an IP stack, a microphone, a video port, Bluetooth, and a whole lot more. And since the microphone is there, Google uses it.

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