Comment by rpcope1

Maybe some of the newer stuff is better, but you're kind of overselling the hardware protection (lol). I'm sure everyone thought RDP1 on the STM32F1xx series was going to stop "bad guys" (or even RDP2, lol) but I was able to do better than Obermaier on firmware recovery of a F103 recently without going to the trouble of doing something like delidding a chip or even undersoldering it. The newer stuff is a little better, but a quarter in the Deepseek machine, some fairly common tools and patience, and even skids will be breaking into your invulnerable firmware fortress. I think the apocalyptic nature of all this just hasn't really sunk in for a lot of EEs or firmware developers.