3 ms·

We've built a big mud-pie with gaping holes everywhere it seems. Initially getting things working and networked was the goal I guess; security wasn't something

We've built a big mud-pie with gaping holes everywhere it seems. Initially getting things working and networked was the goal I guess; security wasn't something people had really worried about (look at earlier network protocols - a lot of trusted stuff just by virtue of being on the same lan/wan). Mitigating timing attacks and branch prediction attacks over a network etc I don't think had even been heard of. The virus maker/anti-virus vendor self-feeding thing/arms-race is another crackup.

Skunkleton 8y ago
When you consider how complicated computers are, the current state of security is a pretty impressive achievement.
mindfulhack 8y ago
I wonder if it's scientific at all to speculate* that this computer security situation is an extension of the fact that biologically, we are built more to destroy (in our cells, and thus our evolutionary psychology) than create (i.e. stay healthy, endure, and be indestructible). Sure, we re-create, but that cycle aside, it's easier to attack and kill than to defend and live. In all of nature, it is easier to destroy than it is to create. Thus, our human-created systems of information technology are fundamentally trapped in the same paradigm as we are, with the same characteristics described as above. If that is true, then truly secure systems may only be possible if an 'AI' singularity occurs, i.e. once a tipping point of self-improving software to fundamentally happens in which it becomes able to re-invent itself as fast as it needs to be (a million times a second until ad infinitum), only then will computer security truly exist, because such a system of creation of no longer bound by nature's cells and earlier evolution. Until then, computer security is way too limited to our very primitive selves that it suffers from now. (*) sigh...
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
digi_owl 8y ago
Iirc, various people wanted to build encryption etc into tcp/ip. But there was a this thing called the cold war going on, and thus encryption was treated as military hardware in the eyes of export law. Though really one could probably put the ultimate blame on the von Neumann architecture winning the CPU design prize. Thus any data can potentially be a program...

Skunkleton 8y ago

When you consider how complicated computers are, the current state of security is a pretty impressive achievement.

mindfulhack 8y ago

I wonder if it's scientific at all to speculate* that this computer security situation is an extension of the fact that biologically, we are built more to destroy (in our cells, and thus our evolutionary psychology) than create (i.e. stay healthy, endure, and be indestructible). Sure, we re-create, but that cycle aside, it's easier to attack and kill than to defend and live. In all of nature, it is easier to destroy than it is to create. Thus, our human-created systems of information technology are fundamentally trapped in the same paradigm as we are, with the same characteristics described as above. If that is true, then truly secure systems may only be possible if an 'AI' singularity occurs, i.e. once a tipping point of self-improving software to fundamentally happens in which it becomes able to re-invent itself as fast as it needs to be (a million times a second until ad infinitum), only then will computer security truly exist, because such a system of creation of no longer bound by nature's cells and earlier evolution. Until then, computer security is way too limited to our very primitive selves that it suffers from now. (*) sigh...

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

digi_owl 8y ago

Iirc, various people wanted to build encryption etc into tcp/ip. But there was a this thing called the cold war going on, and thus encryption was treated as military hardware in the eyes of export law. Though really one could probably put the ultimate blame on the von Neumann architecture winning the CPU design prize. Thus any data can potentially be a program...