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pants2today at 7:02 PM3 repliesview on HN

Software security heavily favors the defenders (ex. it's much easier to encrypt a file than break the encryption). Thus with better tools and ample time to reach steady-state, we would expect software to become more secure.


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justincormacktoday at 7:12 PM

Software security heavily favours the attacker (ex. its much easier to find a single vulnerability than to patch every vulnerability). Thus with better tools and ample time to reach steady-state, we would expect software to remain insecure.

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tptacektoday at 7:48 PM

I don't think this is broadly true and to the extent it's true for cryptographic software, it's only relatively recently become true; in the 2000s and 2010s, if I was tasked with assessing software that "encrypted a file" (or more likely some kind of "message"), my bet would be on finding a game-over flaw in that.

intendedtoday at 7:25 PM

This came across as so confident that I had a moment of doubt.

It is most definitely an attackers world: most of us are safe, not because of the strength of our defenses but the disinterest of our attackers.

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