Caveat Emptor

Published: 2009-01-11
Last Updated: 2009-01-11 14:59:01 UTC
by Chris Carboni (Version: 1)
1 comment(s)

Jon dropped us a note pointing to an interesting article by Gene Spafford on the dangers of automatic updating of systems.

www.cerias.purdue.edu/site/blog/post/customer_disservice/

While not specifically written about a firewall, or other information security component it is a sobering view of what happens when QA for patches isn't done properly.

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Comments

Sounds much like the Windows XP SP3 that automatically updated numerous systems including those with AMD processors that failed to restart afterwards. Many other vendors have had similar issues. But at least that could be recovered by the user, unlike this situation. I understand that vendors can't test for everything, but for embedded systems such as the article described one ends up with a brick rather than a functioning device as a result of a fully preventable situation neglected by the vendor. Simply unacceptable in the situation described by the article.

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