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Proprietary firmware poses a significant security risk to the user because of the direct memory access (DMA) architecture of modern computers and the potential for DMA attacks. [citation needed] Theo de Raadt of OpenBSD suggests that wireless firmware are kept proprietary because of poor design quality and firmware defects.
As originally used, firmware contrasted with hardware (the CPU itself) and software (normal instructions executing on a CPU). It was not composed of CPU machine instructions, but of lower-level microcode involved in the implementation of machine instructions. It existed on the boundary between hardware and software; thus the name firmware.