[192413] in North American Network Operators' Group
RE: Spitballing IoT Security
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Emille Blanc)
Thu Oct 27 17:32:41 2016
X-Original-To: nanog@nanog.org
From: Emille Blanc <emille@abccommunications.com>
To: Mark Andrews <marka@isc.org>, Alan Buxey <A.L.M.Buxey@lboro.ac.uk>
Date: Thu, 27 Oct 2016 14:30:14 -0700
In-Reply-To: <20161027210014.24E2557D53D3@rock.dv.isc.org>
Cc: NANOG list <nanog@nanog.org>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces@nanog.org
(deleted for ambiguity)
> > Which is the point. These things stay out there...like those winXP
> > boxes. There are 2 choices
> >
> > 1) manufacturers are responsible for the devices. No longer caring for
> > them? Recall them. Compensate the users.
> >
> > 2) stronger obsolescence. eg kill switch/firmware tombstoning/network
> > connectivity function ending timebomb
> >
> > as a user of lots of legacy tech i find either option bad :/
> >
> > alan
>=20
> Or Apple could release iOS 6.1.7. There is nothing stopping Apple doing
> so. Apple are the ones preventing people running iOS 10.x on the 3GS.
> This puts the responsibilty on them to supply security fixes.
>
> All of the PC's running XP could run a newer version of the Windows
> regardless of whether they could run the latest version.
Well, yes and no. As $newer_better_faster_stronger gains market share, the=
re's no drive to be backwards compatible.
iOS is no different from any other operating system in that regard, it's de=
signed for hardware A, B, C, D's 1 through 4 (probably more, but I'm trying=
to be somewhat abstract). If it has to support E through Z also, for 12+ =
years of backwards compatibility, bad things can happen (bloat, instability=
, bugs).
I don't get upset for example, when I transplant a Win2k or Win98 drive int=
o a box built up with 3 year old hardware, of which not a single device is =
supported.
That's not even taking into account the challenge of developing for differe=
nt architectures. ARM, x86, PPC, AMD64, PowerISA, SPARC, to name a few. I w=
on't even get into microcontrollers.
Don't get me wrong. I'd love to update my 12 year old Macbook Pro to Sierra=
, but I've accepted that it, like most electronics, were almost certainly n=
ot engineered, let alone expected, to last even half that long.
I'm reminded of that fact every time I open Youtube, and Flash Player spins=
both of its 2.33ghz Core2 Duo cores to 100% for a 460p video.
Even then, I've had to stop updating Flash sometime around mid 2014, as any=
newer versions cease to function entirely.
