Comment by mystified5016

The exploit here is that you can reprogram new firmware onto the device.

The reason it's not important is that you require a physical connection to the target device. The exact same type of connection you use to program firmware in the first place.

The "backdoor" is just that there's now one additional way to program firmware with a physical connection to the chip. The only issue is it was never documented.

There's no potential for exploitation here. If you have physical access to a real serial port on one of these chips, you cab load your own firmware. That's it. That's the entire exploit.

It's meaningless nothing. It really only matters at all if you care about blocking unauthorized firmware updates over a wired serial connection. If you do care, there are options aplenty.