Reply #7: There's nothing mysterious about "embedded systems"

[IDemo]

It's really just a fancy word to describe single-purpose firmware. Virtually all modern electronic devices utilize them - cellphones, for instance. The Y2K vulnerabilities, if any, were an entirely separate issue than this (except for the short-sightedness of firmware development teams). As far as the "hard to upgrade" part, I'm not sure where they're coming from with that; on the models I worked on the process was generally easier than a PC BIOS update.

As far as this hack being difficult to implement outside "controlled laboratory conditions", from the article: The chips run off-the-shelf operating systems like VxWorks and Linx, a scaled-down version of the Linux operating system designed for embedded devices. Reprogramming the chip was relatively easy, he said – and now that the concept has been proven, he thinks others could reproduce his work in a day or two.

"In fact, it's almost impossible to think that someone else hasn't already done this," he said.