Spitballing IoT Security

Sat Oct 29 06:44:01 UTC 2016

Hi Chris,

On 10/25/16 1:51 PM, Chris Boyd wrote:
>> On Oct 25, 2016, at 3:10 AM, Ronald F. Guilmette <rfg at tristatelogic.com> wrote:
>>
>> An IoT is -not- a general purpose computer.  In the latter case, it is
>> assumed that the owner will "pop the hood" when it comes to the software
>> configuration.
> Ah, but they are.  In many cases you can ship a product faster and cheaper with an ARM based system running a stripped down Linux and some specialty I/O than building a properly hardened custom microcontroller.

That something has a CPU doesn't tell you whether it is a general
purpose computer.  What tells you if a device is a general purpose is
whether it is intended for particular uses or not (the key word there
being "purpose").  More importantly, if you view every Thing as a
general purpose computer you are missing an opportunity to impose an
engineering constraint on the problem space.  If that in turn let's you
easily solve for the general case, you've had a huge win.

Eliot

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