Every ARM SoC is proprietary, closed hardware. Same applies to most other hardware components like Wi-Fi / NFC / cellular radios, touchscreens, cameras and even batteries. There is nothing open about it, and not shipping the firmware updates just exposes users to vulnerabilities.
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Try not to get duped by projects pushing an ARM SoC and other proprietary hardware components as open hardware without proprietary firmware. There are several projects very deliberately misrepresenting this, misleading users and putting them at risk by not providing the updates.
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Full security updates covering all components are incredibly important. Being able to update firmware/microcode rather than replacing hardware over and over again is not a negative. Verified boot, keystore HSMs and other hardware-based security features are also important things.
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It's also important to note that hardware isolation is orthogonal to whether a component is implemented on the same die. In fact, in many cases, components on the SoC chip have better isolation than those outside it due to lack of security work across organizational boundaries.
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Privacy and security have been hijacked for marketing by not just companies but also open source projects. You cannot believe what you read on these topics from most companies, projects or the media. The industry is full of scammers, dishonesty and ignorance. It's sad all around.
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if you'll throw away security and privacy in pursuit of freedom, you don't understand freedom in the first place
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Preventing users from installing firmware updates is also hardly freedom, and yet that's apparently what passes for it these days. Hiding the fact that the hardware and firmware is proprietary with no way to update it doesn't make things better in any way but rather much worse.
Hiding that it's proprietary and running embedded malicious blobs is harmful. Failure to ship updates to embedded malicious blobs is a tradeoff.
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when running embedded malicious blobs is a fact of life would you rather be running the malicious blobs or running the malicious blobs AND whatever malicious code an attacker wants to run on your modem?
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