“Only I can fix it.” Where have I heard that before?

Every Mac, iPhone, Chromebook and Windows 11 PC contains an embedded microcomputer, running its own OS even, that is as close to 100% immune to attacks as anyone can make it. It can do this because it has a very small, rigorously specified list of operations that it supports, which can be exhaustively specified and validated. This microcomputer then constitutes a “hardware root of trust” for the far more complex CPU and dozen other microcomputers that make up a modern computer. The big OS contains millions of lines of software written over decades of time by uncountable developers using hundreds of different methodologies including the renowned “code first, design later” method.

O’Dowd proposes to start over from scratch using his proprietary software and proprietary development method. Even discounting the undefinable complexity of a heads-up mapping display and a usable infotainment system, creating a provably secure method for over-the-air updates requires securing the high-end workstations and software repositories of more developers back at the manufacturer’s headquarters than anyone can imagine. He thinks that he’s got a stranglehold on the extent of the problem and can enumerate every one of its mathematically uncountable vulnerabilities.

By the time he reduces and circumscribes the problem so that it is tractable, it becomes so small that its solution doesn’t do anything useful. Security is hard..