alt Hacker NewsObscurity is not security.
But it can add a bit of delay to someone breaking actual security, so maybe they'll hit the next target first as that is a touch easier. Though with the increasing automation of hole detection and exploitation, even that might stop being the case if it hasn't already.
The biggest problem with obscurity measures IMO is psychological: people tend to assume that the measures⁰ are far more effective than they actually are, so they might make less effort to verify that the proper security is done properly.
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[0] like moving SSHd to a non-standard port¹
[1] a solution that can inconvenience your users more than attackers, and historically (in combination with exploiting a couple of bugs) actually made certain local non-root credential scanning attacks possible if you chose a high port
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The other thing though is that there are situations where you only have a limited amount of tries for a password, and incorrect tries can have dire consequences. If you are being asked for a password by an armed guard, and you hack the system completely and get the password, but didn't know about the last obscured step that you were supposed to type it with your left hand, not your right, you will still face whatever consequences even though that step didn't add any security.
> But it can add a bit of delay
The delay can also be infinite in practice. If a really bad zero day is discovered, it might protect you from becoming a victim. No guarantees, but it can improve your chances.
> Obscurity is not security.
So ASLR [1] is not a security control? I guess you are pretty alone with this opinion.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Address_space_layout_randomiza...
Obscurity can be combined with security for much better results. Machines as well as AI in extension thrives off patterns and making illogical off-pattern decisions is usually to the benefit of the defender, not the attacker. As you said, the attacker has a wide attack surface to cover while the defender only has to fortify his home NAT. E.g. port knocking may very well throw off the hoard of scanners on the wide net simply because its not standart and the combination is known only to you. Similarly, fail2ban may not work as well on a standart SSH port, because every attacker is going to hammer that and one may get your misconfigured password root login right.
Now, in both instances, the obscurity provided does not necessarily cure your infrastructure's vulnerabilities, a dedicated attacker wouldn't have a single problem with either of these. But for someone who hammers the whole internet in a dim hope of finding another Wordpress server from 2017, or the latest flawed online security cam, your disguise is as good as perfect.