Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by cmn32480 on Monday October 03 2016, @07:29PM   Printer-friendly
from the inherently-broken dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story from Bruce Schneier's blog:

Every few years, a researcher replicates a security study by littering USB sticks around an organization's grounds and waiting to see how many people pick them up and plug them in, causing the autorun function to install innocuous malware on their computers. These studies are great for making security professionals feel superior. The researchers get to demonstrate their security expertise and use the results as "teachable moments" for others. "If only everyone was more security aware and had more security training," they say, "the Internet would be a much safer place."

Enough of that. The problem isn't the users: it's that we've designed our computer systems' security so badly that we demand the user do all of these counterintuitive things. Why can't users choose easy-to-remember passwords? Why can't they click on links in emails with wild abandon? Why can't they plug a USB stick into a computer without facing a myriad of viruses? Why are we trying to fix the user instead of solving the underlying security problem?

Traditionally, we've thought about security and usability as a trade-off: a more secure system is less functional and more annoying, and a more capable, flexible, and powerful system is less secure. This "either/or" thinking results in systems that are neither usable nor secure.

[...] We must stop trying to fix the user to achieve security. We'll never get there, and research toward those goals just obscures the real problems. Usable security does not mean "getting people to do what we want." It means creating security that works, given (or despite) what people do. It means security solutions that deliver on users' security goals without­ -- as the 19th-century Dutch cryptographer Auguste Kerckhoffs aptly put it­ -- "stress of mind, or knowledge of a long series of rules."

[...] "Blame the victim" thinking is older than the Internet, of course. But that doesn't make it right. We owe it to our users to make the Information Age a safe place for everyone -- ­not just those with "security awareness."


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2) by Arik on Monday October 03 2016, @09:45PM

    by Arik (4543) on Monday October 03 2016, @09:45PM (#409678) Journal
    "Yep. The internet sure was better when everything was plain text, and lynx was the state of the art as a browser. That's the only sane way to use the internet, and all these new fangled people with their formatting and their images and videos are just completely unreasonable in thinking that's something we should support. "

    You speak as if you don't think it's possible to have formatting and images and videos without also having insecurity. Can you really believe that?

    --
    If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 2) by MrGuy on Monday October 03 2016, @10:35PM

    by MrGuy (1007) on Monday October 03 2016, @10:35PM (#409711)

    You speak as if you think formatting and images and videos are a problem that's holding back the internet from reaching its full potential, and we should really go back to the "good old days" when the internet was all text.

    Can YOU really believe that?

    • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 03 2016, @11:12PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 03 2016, @11:12PM (#409724)

      Arik never said anything about formatting/images/videos, just that most browsers and websites have huge vulnerabilities because very little attention was paid to security. It isn't about the good old days, its about security.

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by termigator on Tuesday October 04 2016, @04:07AM

      by termigator (4271) on Tuesday October 04 2016, @04:07AM (#409803)

      People forget that there were attempts a long time ago to provide formatting in email (e.g. text/richtext, text/enriched, text/setext, etc). Did not get much traction, likely due to graphical environments still being more of a luxury. Then the web with HTML came along. Instead of asking, "Should we?" asshats decided that HTML (which brings in scripting support) should be used: "Hey we got this web browsing thingamjing, so lets slap it into our email client... look I can use colors and make my text real big, whipee!". HTML in email was chosen by developers out of pure laziness and cluelessness.

      Images and video attachment capabilities in email pre-date the web. I think what some of us object to is the gross ignorance that has been pushing the evolution of MUAs. Microsoft has been the worst in screwing up the progress and usage of email-based technologies. I hope there is a special place in hell for them.