8 ms·

What you are proposing are what I think would be called a security theater. It gives the illusion of security, but they would absolutely not deter a determined

What you are proposing are what I think would be called a security theater. It gives the illusion of security, but they would absolutely not deter a determined threat actor. The only reason that the water supply isn't poisoned is it's unpractical for a single person to conduct the whole exploit chain: Construct the poison in enough quantities, gain access to facilities supplying the water, and actually throwing the compound in it. It's unpractical even for "underground" types. Especially the quantities required. Mathematics and computer science is a different story in my opinion. You cannot restrict science or thought. You can try, but good luck. The most you can do is delay it. If there is an attack that enables someone to flip a Tesla on the road (as suggested below), the security theater will hide the attack from common folk, but determined actors will reach it eventually, and at that point, they can deploy it as they wish. And in contrast to the water plant, the logistical endeavor to exploit it is absolutely easy in comparison: slap a sticker on your vehicle. Security by obscurity or by theater is rarely a good strategy in my opinion. We should absolutely be transparent about these kind of things, and allow researchers full access to develop attacks against these systems, and effectively communicate when they are found.

mgraczyk 5y ago
Right, and the protections for poison are also security theater for the same reason. In the real world that's ok. > The only reason that the water supply isn't poisoned is it's unpractical for a single person to conduct the whole exploit chain It's a quantitative question, just like with computer vision. If you don't like the poison example, consider viral DNA, which is also dangerous in the right hands and does not require massive supply chain control. Not everyone has access to a driving dataset like Teslas, and it would be difficult to trick a Tesla without such a dataset. We should allow researches to develop attacks, just like we should allow researchers to study poisons, DNA, and viruses.
- flerovium 5y ago
  The lab leak theory isn't necessarily true, but this analogy isn't as conclusive as you make it sound...
eximius 5y ago
> It gives the illusion of security, but they would absolutely not deter a determined threat actor. Sure. And the threat of jail/imprisonment doesn't deter determined murderer's. It doesn't mean we shouldn't put deterrents.
- kingcharles 5y ago
  Absolutely we need deterrents, otherwise chaos. What deterrents is one of the hardest problems society has ever grappled with. How do we stop antisocial behaviours? Prisons (a modern punishment) do not seem to work, for a multitude of complicated reasons. This is coming from someone who has been through the system.
- p_j_w 5y ago
  >It doesn't mean we shouldn't put deterrents. GP doesn't say we shouldn't, but rather that it's not good enough.
  - eximius 5y ago
    Generally calling something security theatre has an implication that it shouldnt be done because of its inefficacy and the availability of robust alternatives (e.g., port knocking is theatre when we can have robust security on known ports with minimal configuration and cryptography).
    - aneutron 5y ago
      While I do agree that security theater does have a connotation for things that have no reason to be done, I only meant that it's not enough. It's theater in the sense that it would only provide a sense of safety, not solve the actual underlying issue or vulnerability class.
      - ghaff 5y ago
        In general, very little is ever enough to completely prevent some sort of determined targeted attack, especially if the attacker doesn't care whether they're caught or not.
xyzzyz 5y ago
Construct the poison in enough quantities, gain access to facilities supplying the water, and actually throwing the compound in it. Gaining access is rather easy. You can easily fly drones over most of reservoirs and dump whatever you want into them. Making strong poisons is also relatively easy, eg. dimethylmercury can be easily synthesized by any chemistry graduate.
- jcims 5y ago
  You can just pump it back into the municipal water supply from the comfort of your own home (or better yet, someone else’s). You may need to work around a backflow preventer but that’s not too difficult.
- josefx 5y ago
  This results in a dead chemistry graduate.
tshaddox 5y ago
It’s pretty easy for a single person to modify or remove an important street sign. Some kids stole traffic signs and were convicted of manslaughter when someone ran a (missing) stop sign and killed another driver. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1997/06/21/3-who-stole-traffic-signs-sentenced-to-15-years/14c0a68c-e8fd-42ba-881c-454f442a27f8/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1997/06/21/3...
- GhettoComputers 5y ago
  Looks like they were innocent. https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/casedetail.aspx?caseid=4362 https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/casedeta... > In 1998, the defense filed a post-conviction motion for a new trial. At a hearing on the motion, several witnesses testified that they had driven by the intersection days before the accident and the stop sign was already down. Some of the witnesses said that after the charges were filed, they reported to both Hillsborough County Sheriff’s detectives and the prosecution that the sign had been down for days, but the information was disregarded. One of the witnesses said she spoke to the prosecutor who disregarded the report and replied that she intended to “burn their ass,” referring to the defendants. >The motion for a new trial was denied, and the defendants appealed the decision. In March 2001, the Florida Court of Appeals reversed the manslaughter convictions of all three defendants. The court held that the prosecution had made improper comments during closing argument. The court did not reverse the grand theft convictions.
  - tshaddox 5y ago
    Fair enough, I'm not very familiar with the details of that case, but my overall points are that 1) it's easy to remove traffic signs (and thoughtless kids probably do it every so often as a dumb joke), 2) this can definitely lead to bad accidents (with human drivers), and 3) the legal system will likely at least consider whether the people who tampered with the traffic signs are culpable for the accidents.
    - sieabahlpark 5y ago
      Yet you found it critical enough to write a comment using it as the basis for your argument...?
gh0std3v 5y ago
> What you are proposing are what I think would be called a security theater. I don't think putting people to prison for, say, flipping a Tesla by screwing with its computer vision algorithm is security theatre. Rather, it's accountability. I'm pretty sure most people are aware that you cannot stop a determined attacker from breaking a system (which is exactly why Spectre mitigations were implemented as soon as the vulnerability was discovered: it's hard to exploit, but still possible). Defining a legal code for exploiting computer systems through their hardware or their software is not security theatre, it's to ensure that we have a system to punish crime.
- ineedasername 5y ago
  The theater is in the (somewhat) illusory notion that precautions could prevent it from happening. Prosecuting a crime is absolutely not the same thing as actual security. If a modestly funded department at a university can do this, it's within reach for pretty much any state-level actor. And just like deepfakes are much easier & available for scammers today than they were 5 years ago, the same will go for adversarial images. 5 years ago it would have been pretty much unthinkable that a ransomware attack could actually take down most of the eastern US petrol pipeline infrastructure but here we are, no one prosecuted, and apparently the only thing stopping other high profile attacks is the forebearance and self-policing of the thieves themselves.
  - nerdponx 5y ago
    Making it very expensive to do a thing still reduces the chance of someone doing the thing. How many more murders of passion would happen if murder wasn't illegal? Laws against murder don't prevent murder from ever happening, but they ensure that committing it is weighed against very high costs. Perhaps there are other ways to reduce the chance of bad things happening, like reducing opportunities for the bad thing to happen in the first place (eg. not overly relying on computer vision).
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
adrianN 5y ago
Our whole society is based on the assumption that there are very few determined threat actors. Literally nothing would function if not almost everybody would agree that it's a bad idea to try and break it. I don't think you can change that without making society an unlivable hell.

mgraczyk 5y ago

Right, and the protections for poison are also security theater for the same reason. In the real world that's ok. > The only reason that the water supply isn't poisoned is it's unpractical for a single person to conduct the whole exploit chain It's a quantitative question, just like with computer vision. If you don't like the poison example, consider viral DNA, which is also dangerous in the right hands and does not require massive supply chain control. Not everyone has access to a driving dataset like Teslas, and it would be difficult to trick a Tesla without such a dataset. We should allow researches to develop attacks, just like we should allow researchers to study poisons, DNA, and viruses.

flerovium 5y ago
The lab leak theory isn't necessarily true, but this analogy isn't as conclusive as you make it sound...

eximius 5y ago

> It gives the illusion of security, but they would absolutely not deter a determined threat actor. Sure. And the threat of jail/imprisonment doesn't deter determined murderer's. It doesn't mean we shouldn't put deterrents.

kingcharles 5y ago
Absolutely we need deterrents, otherwise chaos. What deterrents is one of the hardest problems society has ever grappled with. How do we stop antisocial behaviours? Prisons (a modern punishment) do not seem to work, for a multitude of complicated reasons. This is coming from someone who has been through the system.
p_j_w 5y ago
>It doesn't mean we shouldn't put deterrents. GP doesn't say we shouldn't, but rather that it's not good enough.
- eximius 5y ago
  Generally calling something security theatre has an implication that it shouldnt be done because of its inefficacy and the availability of robust alternatives (e.g., port knocking is theatre when we can have robust security on known ports with minimal configuration and cryptography).
  - aneutron 5y ago
    While I do agree that security theater does have a connotation for things that have no reason to be done, I only meant that it's not enough. It's theater in the sense that it would only provide a sense of safety, not solve the actual underlying issue or vulnerability class.
    - ghaff 5y ago
      In general, very little is ever enough to completely prevent some sort of determined targeted attack, especially if the attacker doesn't care whether they're caught or not.

xyzzyz 5y ago

Construct the poison in enough quantities, gain access to facilities supplying the water, and actually throwing the compound in it. Gaining access is rather easy. You can easily fly drones over most of reservoirs and dump whatever you want into them. Making strong poisons is also relatively easy, eg. dimethylmercury can be easily synthesized by any chemistry graduate.

jcims 5y ago
You can just pump it back into the municipal water supply from the comfort of your own home (or better yet, someone else’s). You may need to work around a backflow preventer but that’s not too difficult.
josefx 5y ago
This results in a dead chemistry graduate.

tshaddox 5y ago

It’s pretty easy for a single person to modify or remove an important street sign. Some kids stole traffic signs and were convicted of manslaughter when someone ran a (missing) stop sign and killed another driver. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1997/06/21/3-who-stole-traffic-signs-sentenced-to-15-years/14c0a68c-e8fd-42ba-881c-454f442a27f8/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1997/06/21/3...

GhettoComputers 5y ago
Looks like they were innocent. https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/casedetail.aspx?caseid=4362 https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/casedeta... > In 1998, the defense filed a post-conviction motion for a new trial. At a hearing on the motion, several witnesses testified that they had driven by the intersection days before the accident and the stop sign was already down. Some of the witnesses said that after the charges were filed, they reported to both Hillsborough County Sheriff’s detectives and the prosecution that the sign had been down for days, but the information was disregarded. One of the witnesses said she spoke to the prosecutor who disregarded the report and replied that she intended to “burn their ass,” referring to the defendants. >The motion for a new trial was denied, and the defendants appealed the decision. In March 2001, the Florida Court of Appeals reversed the manslaughter convictions of all three defendants. The court held that the prosecution had made improper comments during closing argument. The court did not reverse the grand theft convictions.
- tshaddox 5y ago
  Fair enough, I'm not very familiar with the details of that case, but my overall points are that 1) it's easy to remove traffic signs (and thoughtless kids probably do it every so often as a dumb joke), 2) this can definitely lead to bad accidents (with human drivers), and 3) the legal system will likely at least consider whether the people who tampered with the traffic signs are culpable for the accidents.
  - sieabahlpark 5y ago
    Yet you found it critical enough to write a comment using it as the basis for your argument...?

gh0std3v 5y ago

> What you are proposing are what I think would be called a security theater. I don't think putting people to prison for, say, flipping a Tesla by screwing with its computer vision algorithm is security theatre. Rather, it's accountability. I'm pretty sure most people are aware that you cannot stop a determined attacker from breaking a system (which is exactly why Spectre mitigations were implemented as soon as the vulnerability was discovered: it's hard to exploit, but still possible). Defining a legal code for exploiting computer systems through their hardware or their software is not security theatre, it's to ensure that we have a system to punish crime.

ineedasername 5y ago
The theater is in the (somewhat) illusory notion that precautions could prevent it from happening. Prosecuting a crime is absolutely not the same thing as actual security. If a modestly funded department at a university can do this, it's within reach for pretty much any state-level actor. And just like deepfakes are much easier & available for scammers today than they were 5 years ago, the same will go for adversarial images. 5 years ago it would have been pretty much unthinkable that a ransomware attack could actually take down most of the eastern US petrol pipeline infrastructure but here we are, no one prosecuted, and apparently the only thing stopping other high profile attacks is the forebearance and self-policing of the thieves themselves.
- nerdponx 5y ago
  Making it very expensive to do a thing still reduces the chance of someone doing the thing. How many more murders of passion would happen if murder wasn't illegal? Laws against murder don't prevent murder from ever happening, but they ensure that committing it is weighed against very high costs. Perhaps there are other ways to reduce the chance of bad things happening, like reducing opportunities for the bad thing to happen in the first place (eg. not overly relying on computer vision).

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

adrianN 5y ago

Our whole society is based on the assumption that there are very few determined threat actors. Literally nothing would function if not almost everybody would agree that it's a bad idea to try and break it. I don't think you can change that without making society an unlivable hell.