Re:Kevin Mitnick Now Selling Zero-Day Exploits
by tzs on Wednesday September 24, 2014 @02:02PM
(#8363022)
> This is fairly axiomatic. An open market increases the price of vulnerabilities which in turn increases the number of vulnerabilities found (unless you want to argue the ability to find vulnerabilities is inelastic for some reason)
Wait a second...won't increasing the number of vulnerabilities found push prices down? If I'm looking to penetrate a system I only need to buy one vulnerability, so in effect different vulnerabilities are somewhat fungible and so should compete on price. Hence, if more vulnerabilities are being found and coming to market, prices should be going down.
On the other hand, with a free and open market for vulnerabilities there would likely be people who would NOT have bought vulnerabilities on the black market buying vulnerabilities on the safer, easier to use free and open market, so demand could go up, raising prices.
Wait a second...won't increasing the number of vulnerabilities found push prices down? If I'm looking to penetrate a system I only need to buy one vulnerability, so in effect different vulnerabilities are somewhat fungible and so should compete on price. Hence, if more vulnerabilities are being found and coming to market, prices should be going down.
On the other hand, with a free and open market for vulnerabilities there would likely be people who would NOT have bought vulnerabilities on the black market buying vulnerabilities on the safer, easier to use free and open market, so demand could go up, raising prices.