Generally caused by the exploitation of features having been put into the hardware to differentiate it from the competition or to aid in the support and maintenance of the hardware. Some exploitable features include terminals with memory that can be reread by the computer and downloadable configuration and password protection for all types of peripheral devices, including printers. It is the cracker’s creative misuse of these features that can turn a “feature” into a “vulnerability.”

See Also: Exploit; Hardware Attacks Paper by Ishai, Sahai, and Wagner; Vulnerabilities of Computers.