I feel that fixing the security holes has little to do with reducing the damage done due to increased attack surface. If you're a software developer who is not

I feel that fixing the security holes has little to do with reducing the damage done due to increased attack surface. If you're a software developer who is not doing security research, and who is mainly interested in some functionality offered by a module, you'd be better off giving the module exactly the privileges it needs, not more and not less. If not, wouldn't OS's run all user-space programs in ring-0? (Maybe I am stretching it a bit) If Bernstein meant that this principle has been misquoted/abused/understood in all wrong ways (like most of the "premature optimization" quotes), then perhaps it makes some sense. :)