4 ms·

Awesome article. My take away for the computer world... There's no safe, just safer. Security through obscurity is not as ridiculous as popularly believed.

Awesome article. My take away for the computer world... There's no safe, just safer. Security through obscurity is not as ridiculous as popularly believed. Make your secrets distributed and subtle, and protected in multiple ways for best likelihood!

zobzu 11y ago
the major issue with security by obscurity is ignorance. a very well secured secret that is also not talked about will be very safe. a poorly secured secret that is also not talked about will not be very safe, and you probably wont even know when its stolen. in the real world, the later happens most of the time. hence why security by obscurity is highly discouraged. it enforces the security mechanisms to be pretty good.
e12e 11y ago
The "security by obscurity" that we have in the physical world, is closer to AT&T publishing personal data on their web site, and weev getting sentenced to years in prison for pointing it out, than many people realize. The big difference, is that in the digital world, seeing is possession -- if someone walks up on your porch an reads the documents you've placed there, you'd never know. (Writing this, I kind of realize how some seemingly sensible people think that the crazy laws on computer intrusion makes sense... but the don't. That's a discussion for another time, though. Along with how analogies may not be the best vehicle to determine sentencing guidelines new areas opened up by new technology...)
legulere 11y ago
And then there's so safe, that it can't be circumvented in the time the university exists.
mortehu 11y ago
I think defense in depth[1][2] might be the term you're looking for. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_in_depth_%28computing%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_in_depth_%28computing%... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defence_in_depth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defence_in_depth

zobzu 11y ago

the major issue with security by obscurity is ignorance. a very well secured secret that is also not talked about will be very safe. a poorly secured secret that is also not talked about will not be very safe, and you probably wont even know when its stolen. in the real world, the later happens most of the time. hence why security by obscurity is highly discouraged. it enforces the security mechanisms to be pretty good.

e12e 11y ago

The "security by obscurity" that we have in the physical world, is closer to AT&T publishing personal data on their web site, and weev getting sentenced to years in prison for pointing it out, than many people realize. The big difference, is that in the digital world, seeing is possession -- if someone walks up on your porch an reads the documents you've placed there, you'd never know. (Writing this, I kind of realize how some seemingly sensible people think that the crazy laws on computer intrusion makes sense... but the don't. That's a discussion for another time, though. Along with how analogies may not be the best vehicle to determine sentencing guidelines new areas opened up by new technology...)

legulere 11y ago

And then there's so safe, that it can't be circumvented in the time the university exists.

mortehu 11y ago

I think defense in depth[1][2] might be the term you're looking for. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_in_depth_%28computing%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_in_depth_%28computing%... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defence_in_depth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defence_in_depth