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[return to "A case against security nihilism"]
1. dfabul+Ng[view] [source] 2021-07-20 20:41:22
>>feross+(OP)
The article says that although "you can't have perfect security," you can make it uneconomical to hack you. It's a good point, but it's not the whole story.

The problem is that state-level actors don't just have a lot of money; they (and their decision makers) also put a much much lower value on their money than you do.

I would never think to spend a million dollars on securing my home network (including other non-dollar costs like inconveniencing myself). Let's suppose that spending $1M would force the US NSA to spend $10M to hack into my home network. The people making that decision aren't spending $10M of their own money; they're spending $10M of the government's money. The NSA doesn't care about $10M in the same way that I care about $1M.

As a result, securing yourself even against a dedicated attacker like Israel's NSO Group could cost way, way more than a simple budget analysis would imply. I'd have to make the costs of hacking me so high that someone at NSO would say "wait a minute, even we can't afford that!"

So, sure, "good enough" security is possible in principle, I think it's fair to say "You probably can't afford good-enough security against state-level actors."

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2. crater+Sr[view] [source] 2021-07-20 21:37:19
>>dfabul+Ng
> The problem is that state-level actors don't just have a lot of money; they (and their decision makers) also put a much much lower value on their money than you do.

They also have something else most people don't have: time. Nation-states and actors at that level of sophistication can devote years to their goals. This is reflected in the acronym APT, or Advanced Persistent Threat. It's not that just once they have hacked you they'll stick around until they are detected or have everything they need, it's also that they'll keep trying, playing the long game, waiting for their target to get tired or make a mistake, and fail to keep up with advancing sophistication?

In your example, you spend $1M on your home network, but do you keep spending the money, month after month, year after year, to prevent bitrot? Equifax failed to update Struts to address a known vulnerability, not just because of cost but also time. It's cost around $2billion so far, and the final cost might never really be known.

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