this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2023
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What a pathetic excuse. You know what's at the other end of a USB-A cable? A USB-B connector that didn't have the symmetry problem. Also, Firewire existed around the same time (in fact, slightly earlier) and didn't have the symmetry problem.
FireWire was an amazing interface, and nothing has quite come as close. The ability for devices on a FireWire daisy chain to talk to each other without the computer being involved made it excellent for storage
And excellent as an attack vector to crack computers you have physical access to.
If an attacker has physical access to a computer, the game has already been lost.
Yes, in part because of attack vectors like this.
USB has had its share of vulnerabilities too, I’m sure if we have dropped support the last 10 years would have seen a lot of shaves to the design of Firewire.
But it is a shame that so many cool features from the 90’s and 2000’s were just gaping security holes.