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As an outsider on most IT security so take the rest of this with a grain of salt, but I think reliability is a good way to view this topic. Complexity is the en
by nickpeterson 2y ago
As an outsider on most IT security so take the rest of this with a grain of salt, but I think reliability is a good way to view this topic. Complexity is the enemy of reliability and security. Most organizations seem to operate under the delusion that you can brute force your way to security through audits and policy. They're trying to 'test the quality in' so to speak. Think of the legion of security admins who diligently tweak windows group policies, firewall settings, and systems like 2FA/MFA. Nobody can stomach the truth that most of these things have grown in complexity beyond their ability to be truly reliable. They're basically the IT equivalent of locks on a few doors of mansion with 80 windows, they prevent some crimes of opportunity but won't stop an attacker motivated by something else.
This also doesn't tend to bother security people. It's interesting, it quickly shifts to, "Well we don't run a nuclear reactor..." or "We're not a cloud provider or a bank", so they think they're not critical infrastructure and crimes of opportunity are really their main threat (ransomware, disgruntled ex-employees, etc). Also, their job usually depends on tweaking the knobs in this complex pachinko machine, so to have some outsider tell them to throw it all away is basically like saying you think they should lose their job as well.
I don't know where this rant should end, but I think if I was tasked with making infrastructure decisions, It would be really hard for me to not use things like OpenBSD and SQLite for a lot of it. I'm sure someone here will say actually those are bad for various reasons, but they at least seem to capture the ethos of, "We're going to just say no to things and try to control the complexity of this thing." They also don't seem very motivated by making money which tends to be the root of most compromising decisions.
- rustcleaner 2y agoKnowing how frail software out there really can be, I made moves to Qubes OS and GrapheneOS as my primary operating system distributions over a year ago. Haven't looked back since the first month! PC users should be using some kind of segregation like VMs these days; you most likely don't have a MAC policy protecting your files from your porn site bunker-busted browser, so your data is likely going up the pipe to North Korea (but you did make sure to be a user so at least it can't install the printer driver wrapped rootkit).
- nickpeterson 2y agoThose are neat projects to look into, thanks. That said, I feel like wrapping everything in vms/container is actually an example of the complexity I’m fighting against. I want less code that does less with more eyes on it.
- pixl97 2y agoLooking at the XZ attack from last month, a lot of people that write software have no idea of the depth their software is being used in secure systems.