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This is the opposite of the commonly held belief in security.[1] As an attacker, I would invest all of my efforts into finding a 0day in one application, knowin
by lawnchair_larry 13y ago
This is the opposite of the commonly held belief in security.[1] As an attacker, I would invest all of my efforts into finding a 0day in one application, knowing it would work on any machine I choose.
If everyone uses different software, say for browsers, there are 3 or 4 major options and a fully reliable exploit (which is rare, but for the sake of argument) will still fail on 25% of targets. Now I need four 0days to know that I can compromise my target. If you're running multiple OSes, the same vulnerability requires a different exploit, so the number goes up even more. I also need a high quality rootkit that works on all of them.
It's not as though I only have to compromise a single box in an entire network to get what I need. Though I don't need to compromise every single box either, so in practice it's somewhere in the middle.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monoculture_%28computer_science%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monoculture_%28computer_science...
- npizzolato 13y agoDo you need 4 0days or 4 targets? I would assume the latter would be the easier thing to get. If that's true, the GPs point has some merit. You just need to find one person running some insecure software and choose him as your target. (I will fully admit I know little about how security works in practice, and would be glad to be proven wrong!)
- rbanffy 13y ago> just need to find one person running some insecure software and choose him as your target. The more options they use, the less likely it is the right person will be running the right exploitable client. You need all vulnerabilities aligned to succeed.
- danielweber 13y agoRight, if I want into your network, I just need in. I don't need to compromise every single person. Now if you were discussing resistance to worms, everyone being different helps. It depends on your threat model.