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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. justbo+WP[view] [source] 2021-07-21 01:15:16
>>dfabul+Ng
> 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!

No really. You just have to do what just happened happen a couple more times and they are finished. If they can't protect their data they have no business, their reputation is destroyed and there's no point of hiring them if a week later the list of the people you are spying leaks. Turn the game around, info security is asymmetric by definition, it's a lot easier to attack than to defend. As a defender you need to plug all possible holes but If you become the attacker you just need to find one.

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