alt Hacker NewsFor 50 years, computer security has largely been built on the theory that most targets aren't worth the relatively high effort to compromise, so it's not worth it to spend the money on security. We're now reaching a point where the effort to compromise is dropping close to 0, which means we've got 50 years of insecure software to reckon for.
The advice today is the same as it has ever been, though. Always assume that any networked computer is or may become compromised. Do not do anything critical on a networked computer, because it is or may become compromised. You can still use computers, but assume that a bad actor may take control at any time, and plan for that eventuality.
For example, if you are hooking up a networked computer to your town's water supply system, ask yourself "what would happen if Iran got complete control of this system?" If you're putting your school system's students' mental health data into a networked computer, ask yourself "what would happen if all of this data became public?"
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A better framing is that security has largely been built on theory that most targets aren't worth the effort to target, so security spending is focused on preventing/mitigating untargeted spray-and-pray attacks.
Computer security has largely been built on the “not enough bears” theory.
Every target is worth attacking, but there are not enough bears to eat everybody. Sure, the bears are breeding, but exponential growth does not look threatening until it suddenly is.
My new security through obscurity is to collect esoteric modern LLM written software, like this sweet gem of a terminal editor written in fortran: https://shithub.sh/fortrangoingonforty/facsimile
Is any of this actually an LLM-related compromise?
> what would happen if Iran got complete control of this system?
What would happen if America got complete control of this system?
Oh wait. Oops.
> The advice today is the same as it has ever been, though. Always assume that any networked computer is or may become compromised. Do not do anything critical on a networked computer, because it is or may become compromised.
This is completely unrealistic advice that 0% of people follow.