Trust, but verify: Why and how to establish trust in embedded devices

A lot of research efforts have been put into constructing secure systems. However, experience has shown that, while there are many products which have a good level of security, others are really insecure. Some are security devices: security is at the core of their purpose; while other are not. We nevertheless often rely on the their security in our daily life and their failure can have serious consequences. In this paper, we discuss why we are in this situation and what we can do to improve the situation. In particular, we defend the thesis that more transparency and more openness in embedded systems hardware and software will foster a more secure ecosystem.