Re:We can no longer leave online security to the market
by tptacek on Sunday October 14, 2018 @10:49AM
(#18213116)
Dan Geer is wrong. I already made the argument, upthread. I'm responding to your appeal to his authority with an appeal to my own experience. It has gotten harder to break into things, not easier. The Morris Worm was arguably bigger deal than NotPetya --- certainly, it was more sophisticated. Every couple years, there's some malware or other that manages to infect huge numbers of machines. IIRC, Nimda took down the entire Naval Marine Corps Internet. They said then that we had crossed some threshold, and from now on attackers were just going to get worse. Who cares? Guess what: the opposite thing happened.
There were computers, telecommunications, dial-up modems, X.25 and private networks in the 90s but the degree of cohesion, sublimation and intra-connectivity wasn't anywhere close to what we have today. Consequently, the actor domain looked very different and concepts such as cyberwarfare weren't even in the public eye. Morris worm vs NotPetya. Sure, barrier to entry was very low compared to now. But, as Dan Geer has repeatedly shown, risk has grown tremendously even if the field has gotten a lot harder. You don't think that completely disproves you?