[foldor]

You know, I'm actually looking forward to the day that we can break existing cryptography. There's a lot of devices that are consumer unfriendly due to their security. Most famously, video game consoles. If we could break their security, it would open them wide to running custom code without tricky hacks that are inaccessible to the average end user. It would also allow enthusiast devs to release new games on disc and have them just boot on an unmodified console. This is something that happens already on older retro consoles like the NES where there security has already been broken.

[thfuran]

But the next generation will then switch to state of the art encryption that isn't readily broken. Unless we end up breaking all known encryption before coming up with viable replacements. Which I think would be far worse than any gains in console hacking could possibly offset.

[krzysiek]

IMHO it's not a matter of security vs the lack of it, but more around: easy, documented, accessible security vs security through obscurity.

[OpenBSD-reich]

I think the better solution is a steep tax on the end product for any product containing at least one microprocessor which executes instructions from a mutable (even if "burned in") memory source, which totally and completely doesn't allow the owner to modify this memory with code of the owner's choice or authorship, with either physical or cryptographic mechanisms. All such devices should be treated as "rented" and not owned, and should have unlimited warranty which must be honored in perpetuity so long as a company exists (including future buyers of the company's assets).

It is a national security risk to allow commercial device makers to lock down the software on these devices and then abandon them in a few years. If in twenty years today's SmartTV has a network vulnerability discovered, the manufacturer (or whoever buys or merges with it) should be liable for updating the SmartTVs, unless it has made the device such that the owner can write and change the code at will.

This law should apply to cars, microwaves, smartphones, computers, washing machines, tractors, game consoles, etc. A twenty percent or more sales tax and perpetual warranty for "closed" platforms. Make it no longer economical to do business the way it currently is done!