The Digital Millennium Copyright Act should be updated with a provision that requires manufacturers to provide a mechanism to re-key devices that have been locked down with public key crypto. The device can be wiped (and rendered non-functional) in the process, but give people the ability to repurpose the devices they own.
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@th Yeah, it's dumb. I mean, I totally understand why they do that kind of stuff. They don't want people to use the devices as a beachhead into their cloud service(s). It makes sense. I just wish they provided a program that would unlock the chip, erase the flash, and reset the chip. At least then it could be reprogrammed and used for something.
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@malcircuit it's really frustrating the Ikea labels the JTAG and SWD pins on their devices, but has started enabling the lock bits so that you can't even erase the EFM32 chip without the secret key. I'm considering hot-air replacing the MCU so that I can flash my own firmware with a minimum amount of ewaste.