Jeff,

While the points you make are valid, you must consider that the vast majority of queries we see on this forum are from people simply too dumb or too lazy to do their own work. Likewise, a number of them have been targeted at shortcuts to obviously unethical practices, like replicating an MCU, as-is, for whatever purpose.

If you think it's OK to copy someone else's code, for whatever purpose, that's a moral judgment that you'll have to make.

However, I don't think that a public forum such as this one is the "right" place for discussion of how to defeat the "security," however false or inadequate, on a product on which someone has "locked the door." Perhaps it should be discussed, but not here, where every dimwit capable of operating a keyboard can exploit it.

I've had pretty good success with "security through obscurity," using such methods as inserting a flatpack between the inner layers of an 8-layer board. I see no point in making it easy to defeat security, no matter how weak, in a public forum, and I do understand that it essentially keeps the honest people honest without impacting the thieves much.

After reading countless rants about why it's wrong to use parts on which the "paint is dry" I find it encouraging that I'm not the only one who's interested in keeping the old stuff that still works OK running. That's a good way to use the techniques of bypassing the security, whatever it is, on a device. However, until we're sure that the person(s) posing the query are, at minimum, intelligent and educated enough to accomplish a task such as disassembling and upgrading a set of code, or unambiguously diagnosing a problem down to the component level, I don't think this sort of thing should be discussed with them, let alone out in public. One can, after all, always take a discussion off the forum and discuss the matter in private email.

I think you can see where I sit on this matter. I agree with you, in that I would allow and even encourage such discussion, but wouldn't encourage it in a public forum, as the probability of doing good is small, while the risk of doing harm is large.

RE