What's in the iSeq 100?

There’s a article doing the rounds regarding security issues in the iSeq 100 specifically:

“we found that the Illumina iSeq 100 used a very outdated implementation of BIOS firmware using CSM mode and without Secure Boot or standard firmware write protections”

A number of Illumina sequencers are based around x86 compute. In particular the MiSeq, MiniSeq and NextSeq 550. For practical purposes I view this as somewhat of a non-story. The iSeq 100 is a wildly unpopular sequencer, likely chosen because it’s relatively cheaply available on eBay.

And I wouldn’t personally view the issues here as particularly unique to DNA sequencers. A bigger issue is that these instruments are sometimes run without user authentication and connected to the open Internet.

What’s a little more interesting is that they provided some internal pictures of the iSeq: