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My reflexive answer before reading the article: "security, security, security." After all: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22119439

I don't disagree with the list though I'm not sure I would have used "robust" to describe "don't brick the device!" And is scaleability really that big of an issue for updates when these can be delivered via CDN? Just sign the update with the right cert, no?

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Nearly all iot stuff we make at work are air gapped, used on ski places or in industry with strict firewalls etc. CDNs are basically impossible there since even if we could allow a single ip to be routed through from Wan to the iot device, since CDNs don't have a fixed IP

It is more nuanced than that. In a simple system this may be better than nothing, but consider what happens when the key that was used to sign that update has been compromised.

Or, consider how an update with multiple payloads could be delivered, if each payload comes from a different vendor.

Or, consider how a device can trust that an update has been signed by both someone authorized to make a release, and by someone who actually wrote the code in the release.

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