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Please take this as critical feedback, and not as a personal attack: The comments which you are making here suggest that you shouldn't develop any software whic

by blagie 3y ago

Please take this as critical feedback, and not as a personal attack: The comments which you are making here suggest that you shouldn't develop any software which in any way touches personal data without significant upskilling on IT security. You're making false comments with complete confidence. Most security scenarios came about as a result of attackers being able to bring systems into absurd situations, and moving systems through unintended pathways. "Reductio ad absurdum" could apply to most digital exploits before they've happened. "Why would the system get into that state?" That's a key difference between physical security and digital security: - In a physical situation, I need to worry about what a typical criminal trying to break into my home or business might do. That requires reasonable measures. - In digital security, I need to worry about what the most absurdly creative attacker on the internet might do (and potentially bundle up as a script / worm / virus / etc.). I do need to worry about scenarios which might seem absurd for physical security. If you engineer classifying only "reasonable" scenarios as security risks, your system WILL eventually be compromised, and there WILL be a data leak. That shift in mind set happened around two decades ago, when the internet went from a friendly neighborhood of academics to the wild, wild west, with increasingly creative criminals attacking systems from countries many people in America have never heard of, and certainly where cross-border law enforcement is impractical. I've seen people like you design systems, and that HAS led to user harm and severe damages to the companies where they worked. At this point, this should be security 101 for anyone building software.

blowski 3y ago
Seems like an argument about system-driven and component-driven risk analyses - they both have their place, and they're not mutually exclusive. Risk-based approaches aren't about either removing all risk or paying attention to only the highest priority ones. Instead, they are about managing and tracking risk at acceptable levels based on threat models and the risk appetites of stakeholders, and implementing appropriate mitigations. https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/collection/risk-management/introducing-system-and-component-driven-risk-management-approaches https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/collection/risk-management/introduci...
- blagie 3y ago
  It's a slightly different argument. The level of "reasonable risk" depends on the attacker in both situations. The odds of any individual crafting a special packet to crash my system are absurdly low. However, "absurdly low" is good enough. All it took was one individual to come up with the ping-of-death and one more to write a script to automate it, and systems worldwide were being taken down by random teenagers in the late nineties. As a result of these and other absurd attacks, any modern IP stack is hardened to extreme levels. In contrast, my house lock is pretty easy to pick (much easier than crafting the ping-of-death), and I sometimes don't even remember to lock it. That's okay, since the threat profile isn't "anyone on the internet," but is rather limited (to people in my community who happen to be trying to break into my house). I don't need to protect my home against the world's most elite criminals trying to break in, since they're not likely to be in that very limited set of people. I do any software I build. That applies both to system threats and to component threats. Digital systems need to be incredibly hard. Google used to know that too. I'm not sure when they unlearned that lesson.
  - blowski 3y ago
    Do you think there’s a standard for “incredibly hard” that all applications need to follow? Or that it varies from one application to another depending on context?
    - blagie 3y ago
      It depends on context. There are many pieces here: 1) Cost of compromise. - For example, medical data, military secrets, and highly-personal data need a high level of security. - Something like Sudoku high scores, perhaps not so much. 2) Benefit of compromise. Some compromises net $0, and some $1M. - Something used by 4B users (like Google) has much higher potential upside than something used by 1 user. If someone can scam-at-scale, that's a lot of money. - Something managing $4B of bitcoin or with designs for the F35 has much higher upside than something with Sudoku high scores. 3) Exposure. - A script I wrote which I run on my local computer doesn't need any security. It's like my bedroom door. - A one-off home, school, or business-internal system is only exposed to those communities, and doesn't need to be excessively hardened. It's more-or-less the same as physical security. - Something on the public internet needs a lot more. This, again, speaks to number of potential attackers (0, dozens/hundreds, or 7B). #1 and #2 are obvious. #3 is the one where I see people screw up with arguments. Threats which seem absurdly unlikely are exploited all the time on the public internet, and intuition from the real world doesn't translate at all.

by blagie 3y ago

blowski 3y ago

Seems like an argument about system-driven and component-driven risk analyses - they both have their place, and they're not mutually exclusive. Risk-based approaches aren't about either removing all risk or paying attention to only the highest priority ones. Instead, they are about managing and tracking risk at acceptable levels based on threat models and the risk appetites of stakeholders, and implementing appropriate mitigations. https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/collection/risk-management/introducing-system-and-component-driven-risk-management-approaches https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/collection/risk-management/introduci...

blagie 3y ago
It's a slightly different argument. The level of "reasonable risk" depends on the attacker in both situations. The odds of any individual crafting a special packet to crash my system are absurdly low. However, "absurdly low" is good enough. All it took was one individual to come up with the ping-of-death and one more to write a script to automate it, and systems worldwide were being taken down by random teenagers in the late nineties. As a result of these and other absurd attacks, any modern IP stack is hardened to extreme levels. In contrast, my house lock is pretty easy to pick (much easier than crafting the ping-of-death), and I sometimes don't even remember to lock it. That's okay, since the threat profile isn't "anyone on the internet," but is rather limited (to people in my community who happen to be trying to break into my house). I don't need to protect my home against the world's most elite criminals trying to break in, since they're not likely to be in that very limited set of people. I do any software I build. That applies both to system threats and to component threats. Digital systems need to be incredibly hard. Google used to know that too. I'm not sure when they unlearned that lesson.
- blowski 3y ago
  Do you think there’s a standard for “incredibly hard” that all applications need to follow? Or that it varies from one application to another depending on context?
  - blagie 3y ago
    It depends on context. There are many pieces here: 1) Cost of compromise. - For example, medical data, military secrets, and highly-personal data need a high level of security. - Something like Sudoku high scores, perhaps not so much. 2) Benefit of compromise. Some compromises net $0, and some $1M. - Something used by 4B users (like Google) has much higher potential upside than something used by 1 user. If someone can scam-at-scale, that's a lot of money. - Something managing $4B of bitcoin or with designs for the F35 has much higher upside than something with Sudoku high scores. 3) Exposure. - A script I wrote which I run on my local computer doesn't need any security. It's like my bedroom door. - A one-off home, school, or business-internal system is only exposed to those communities, and doesn't need to be excessively hardened. It's more-or-less the same as physical security. - Something on the public internet needs a lot more. This, again, speaks to number of potential attackers (0, dozens/hundreds, or 7B). #1 and #2 are obvious. #3 is the one where I see people screw up with arguments. Threats which seem absurdly unlikely are exploited all the time on the public internet, and intuition from the real world doesn't translate at all.