CPU?
Before you worry about device firmwares, you need to go further down the stack and fix the CPU.
Microsoft's revealed it is working with Intel on a “cryptographic microcontroller” to secure its cloud servers and the many firmware-using components within. Redmond's named this effort “Project Cerberus” and says it is “a NIST 800-193 compliant hardware root of trust specifically designed to provide robust security for all …
Before you worry about device firmwares, you need to go further down the stack and fix the CPU.
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This post has been deleted by its author
I did have a slight benefit, I'd read a much more clear article on another site.
People forget MS is one of the largest Open source contributors out there. Granted much of it is for their own benefit, but that's no different to Google.
This recent set of discoveries about Intel chips very nicely complements Ken Thompson's famous insight about software back doors. http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2007/04/15/strange-loops-dennis-ritchie-a/
It never seemed fair that software should be systemically insecure in such a fundamental, Goedelesque way, while hardware stood "unharmed upon the eternal rock".
Now the balance has been redressed and all three components of every computer system are seen to be equally, and fundamentally, insecure: hardware, software, and wetware.