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Comment by QuiEgo | Hacker News Reader

OTP memory is a key building block of any secure system and likely on any device you already have.

Any kind of device-unique key is likely rooted in OTP (via a seed or PUF activation).

The root of all certificate chains is likely hashed in fuses to prevent swapping out cert chains with a flash programmer.

It's commonly used to anti rollback as well - the biggest news here is that they didn't have this already.

If there's some horrible security bug found in an old version of their software, they have no way to stop an attacker from loading up the broken firmware to exploit your device? That is not aligned with modern best practices for security.

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> they have no way to stop an attacker from loading up the broken firmware to exploit your device

You mean the attacker having a physical access to the device plugging in some USB or UART, or the hacker that downgraded the firmware so it can use the exploit in older version to downgrade the firmware to version with the exploit?

Sure. Or the supply chain attacker (who is perhaps a state-level actor if you want to think really spicy thoughts) selling you a device on Amazon you think is secure, that they messed with when it passed through their hands on its way to you.

The state level supply chain attacker can just replace the entire chip, or any other part of the product. No amount of technical wizardry can prevent this.

Modern devices try to prevent this by cryptographically entangling the firmware on the flash to the chip - e.x. encrypting it with a device-unique key from a PUF. So if you replace the chip, it won't be able to decrypt the firmware on flash or boot.

The evil of the type of attack here is that the firmware with an exploit would be properly signed, so the firmware update systems on the chip would install it (and encrypt it with the PUF-based key) unless you have anti-rollback.

Of course, with a skilled enough attacker, anything is possible.

If this would be the reason, downgrading would wipe the device not brick it permanently.

> You mean the attacker having a physical access to the device plugging in some USB or UART

... which describes US border controls or police in general. Once "law enforcement" becomes part of one's threat model, a lot of trade-offs suddenly have the entire balance changed.

Example of evil maid attack. On laptops prevented automatically by secure boot or manually by encryption and checking fingerprints, not by bricking whole device.

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