3 ms·

Whether it is actually being used is irrelevant. Security is about confidence that unauthorized access is impossible, not about whether unauthorized is happenin

Whether it is actually being used is irrelevant. Security is about confidence that unauthorized access is impossible, not about whether unauthorized is happening right now. An unlocked door is not secure against unauthorized entry merely because noone has opened it yet, what makes it insecure is the fact that anyone who wants to can walk through it whenever they want. It is not even relevant whether the door was left unlocked intentionally. An unlocked door is a security problem, whether it was put in place intentionally or due to negligence.

acdha 9y ago
That’s not what we’re talking about, though, is it? Unless the claim is that vendors are shipping IME enabled with secret credentials it’s not a backdoor.
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
  A backdoor does not necessarily have to be in the form of a door, a wall made from cardboard will do just fine as a backdoor. Putting a complex piece of software that you cannot disable, that is potentially reachable from the network, and that won't be updated into every machine is the software-equivalent of building a safe with a cardboard wall: Even if it's not intended as a backdoor, it still has to be treated as a de-facto backdoor for security planning purposes, and whoever uses cardboard to construct a safe wall is to blame. Also, you do not judge security based on what has already happened nor on what you can prove to be insecure. The default assumption is that things are insecure, unless you can demonstrate that there are good reasons to believe that it's not--just as everywhere else in reliability engineering. A bridge is not assumed to be safe to use until it collapses or is demonstrated to be unsafe--a bridge is assumed to be unsafe to use until it is demonstrated that to the best of our current understanding of how to build reliable bridges, there is no reason to expect failure. A bridge where the builder makes a secret out of how the bridge was built is never considered safe.
- comatose 9y ago
  Imagine your pc vendor shipped windows with remote desktop enabled, you can't disable it, and you can't see if there are any local accounts in the group, and also they could be administrators, and also it was far worse than even that, because the computer doesn't have to be on or connected to a lan. imagine if dell shipped with logmein and wol but it was permanent. how are these not security vulnerabilities?

acdha 9y ago

That’s not what we’re talking about, though, is it? Unless the claim is that vendors are shipping IME enabled with secret credentials it’s not a backdoor.

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
A backdoor does not necessarily have to be in the form of a door, a wall made from cardboard will do just fine as a backdoor. Putting a complex piece of software that you cannot disable, that is potentially reachable from the network, and that won't be updated into every machine is the software-equivalent of building a safe with a cardboard wall: Even if it's not intended as a backdoor, it still has to be treated as a de-facto backdoor for security planning purposes, and whoever uses cardboard to construct a safe wall is to blame. Also, you do not judge security based on what has already happened nor on what you can prove to be insecure. The default assumption is that things are insecure, unless you can demonstrate that there are good reasons to believe that it's not--just as everywhere else in reliability engineering. A bridge is not assumed to be safe to use until it collapses or is demonstrated to be unsafe--a bridge is assumed to be unsafe to use until it is demonstrated that to the best of our current understanding of how to build reliable bridges, there is no reason to expect failure. A bridge where the builder makes a secret out of how the bridge was built is never considered safe.
comatose 9y ago
Imagine your pc vendor shipped windows with remote desktop enabled, you can't disable it, and you can't see if there are any local accounts in the group, and also they could be administrators, and also it was far worse than even that, because the computer doesn't have to be on or connected to a lan. imagine if dell shipped with logmein and wol but it was permanent. how are these not security vulnerabilities?