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dwaltriptoday at 12:51 AM2 repliesview on HN

The saying that stuck with me was "defenders have to be right 100% of the time, while attackers only have to be right once".

You are suggesting this isn't correct?

> a defender gets to pick the surface area

What do you mean? You don't pick what you need to defend. Unless you choose not to build a feature. But that's a product design choice... Not a cybersecurity strategy.


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Valakas_today at 5:57 AM

It's correct but defenders also choose where that happens. 100% of the time on the locations and conditions that the defenders choose / allow. As a defender i need to be right 100% of the time, sure, but i can make it so that the things i have to be right about are very well known to me, unknown to others, maybe even extremely unlikely to be to known by others, difficult to get to know, (...). So that saying is true but over simplifies the situation. I know monkey brain likes simple phrase. But monkey not live in savannah anymore. Need to adapt and open mind to complex.

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sudosysgentoday at 1:13 AM

> "defenders have to be right 100% of the time, while attackers only have to be right once"

If you have an adaptive system that can react to attacks flexible (say, your own AI agent), then no, that's not correct. It is correct in the classical conception of cybersecurity where the defender is basically static.

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