For 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?"
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
> 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.
Friend of mine, who's been treated as the unlucky one as an inside joke, made a binance account - after avoiding crypto for years - just hours before the hack happened, it's now official lore that this whole chain of security incidents is entirely his fault.
Due to similar bad timing I got my first Playstation right before the hack in the early 2010s that took down the Playstation network for a whole month. When they offered a make-good to their customers I didn't qualify because my account was too new. I never bought another Sony product again.
This is the same style of attack that took 1.5B from Bybit ~1yr ago.
Fundamentally: There is no way to lock webapps to reproducible builds.
Except: IPFS could do it but IPFS has been very very poorly maintained.
I published IPFS-boot ~1yr ago and its a simple idea:
1. deploy a webapp bootloader using something immutable like IPFS
2. bootloader is basically react hot reloading except user agrees what to load
3. bootloader polls a mutable list of app updates and user agree or disagree each update
Now the bootloader has a static content addressable URI but it can also do updates. TBH I think IPFS may be a lost cause but something needs to take its place and this idea is transferable to whatever that is. https://github.com/rhodey/IPFS-boot
You’re right, but the risk here could be reduced significantly by not loading dozens of third party marketing, analytics, and tracking scripts; one of which was supply chain compromised in this case.
Of course, that goes against commercial interests.
About a month and a half I made a Polymarket account with my Google login. I never traded anything. My account got hacked and they started draining my bank account. Polymarket support was completely non responsive. My bank reversed the charges. About 5 days later I got a text from Polymarket support telling me that it looked like I was having trouble making a deposit and they could help me out. I sent them screenshots of them not responding to my support requests and then never heard back.
My Google account was not compromised. I wouldn't touch Polymarket ever again. There is some kind of massive scam happening here.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 8.0 ms ] threadWired's coverage (25 points) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50296328
WSJ's coverage (20 points) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50294287
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?"
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.
What would happen if America got complete control of this system?
Oh wait. Oops.
This is completely unrealistic advice that 0% of people follow.
...with a hint of sarcasm, but the percentage is definitely a non-zero number.
It seems like the only “safe” option is a PC (+storage) that never attaches to a network, but that extremely limits its usefulness.
Fundamentally: There is no way to lock webapps to reproducible builds.
Except: IPFS could do it but IPFS has been very very poorly maintained.
I published IPFS-boot ~1yr ago and its a simple idea:
1. deploy a webapp bootloader using something immutable like IPFS
2. bootloader is basically react hot reloading except user agrees what to load
3. bootloader polls a mutable list of app updates and user agree or disagree each update
Now the bootloader has a static content addressable URI but it can also do updates. TBH I think IPFS may be a lost cause but something needs to take its place and this idea is transferable to whatever that is. https://github.com/rhodey/IPFS-boot
One could absolutely use subresource integrity to lock one’s reference to a vendor’s subresource to a specific version. That’s what it’s there for.
How are you going to verify your thousands of dependencies, some of them obfuscated/closed source? And if you can’t, what does integrity buy you?
Of course, that goes against commercial interests.
My Google account was not compromised. I wouldn't touch Polymarket ever again. There is some kind of massive scam happening here.