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INTPenisyesterday at 3:56 PM1 replyview on HN

I've been saying for years, it's one layer of security. That's undeniable.


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Lattyyesterday at 4:02 PM

I'll push back on this: obscurity isn't a "free" layer of security, it has both security benefits and security costs.

By having obscurity you lose anther layer of security: public scrutiny. It's harder for security issues to remain if people can see them and point them out, more eyes mean more chances to catch problems.

There is also a cultural component: having to lay out what you are doing publicly means you can't just think "no one will know", and let something slide, which pushes you towards better security practices.

Of course, this doesn't mean obscurity is always going to be the worse choice, there are times it will offer more than it costs and it's particularly evident that in, for example, open source projects, a lot of the time the number of eyes on most code is low enough that "many eyes" is a bit misleading, but I think presenting it as a pure positive is wrong, obscurity has cost, even if you think it's worth it in some cases.

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