The avionics system in the F-22 Raptor, the current U.S. Air Force front line jet fighter, consists of about 1.7 million lines of software code. The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, scheduled to become operational in 2010, will require about 5.7 million lines of code to operate its onboard systems. And Boeings new 787 Dreamliner, scheduled to be delivered to customers in 2010, requires about 6.5 million lines of software code to operate its avionics and onboard support systems. These are impressive amounts of software, yet if you bought a premium-class automobile recently, it probably contains close to 100 million lines of software code, says Manfred Broy, a professor of informatics at Technical University, Munich, and a leading expert on software in cars

Just like any other software, these millions of lines of code – parked in driveway – have exploitable bugs. A defect density rate of 0.4 defects per thousand lines of code combined with a conservative estimation of 5% of defects that are exploitable yields 2,000 exploitable bugs per 100 million lines of code!!!!!

So where does this leave the average commuter on the way from point A to point B. Probably quite afraid. Many of these bugs are an inevitable back door for hackers, raising serious security concerns.

Faulty lines of code are fact of life and there is not much we can do to pevent them, however some precautions can be taken to ensure that they are not exploited.

1. Identify malicious code introduction targeted  at using existing exploitable flaws (e.g. secure boot and run time integrity verification).
2. Allowing valid code images to be revoked and replaced with new, fixed images (renewability mechanisms).
3. Preventing roll backs to faulty images (again, thru mechanisms like Secure boot and others).

Piracy is a fact of life, however at these levels its places a massive question mark over the viability of mobile game developers. When properly implemented digital rights management (DRM) is effective in ensuring a sustainable business for the developer community, offering attractive usage models and encouraging the legal usage of the content.

In order for DRM to be effective it must be incorporated into the device from the ground up. DRM needs to have a “root of trust” in the application processor hardware, moreover the DRM application must be tightly integrated into the device OS. The device firmware and OS should also be better protected, with verification mechanisms, deployed at boot and run time. These embedded security mechanisms together with secure execution environment, secure key storage and robust crypto engines will also limit “Jailbreak” attacks.

It is estimated that the cost of fixing a security problem grows by a factor of 10 for each successive phase of the product life cycle. While eliminating security breaks entirely is close to impossible, designing security into the system from the start creates a solution that is far more effective and ultimately significantly cheaper in the long run.