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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."


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by LoRdTAW on Monday October 03 2016, @09:50PM

    by LoRdTAW (3755) on Monday October 03 2016, @09:50PM (#409686) Journal

    Your missing the main point: The vast majority of people don't understand computer security because they arent taught computer security. Growing up people learn about real word security, don't talk to strangers, cleanliness, lock your doors, etc. They have a connection established early on that says that bottle is probably full of piss and the clothes could have bed bugs or are soiled with god knows what. You lock your door at night because people could walk in, steal shit and possibly hurt you in the process.

    Thing is, computers don't trigger those security measures because they weren't taught. If you taught kids computer security instead of playing oregon trail and learning to use MS office, we might actually have people who see a USB stick kicking around and think "Oh hell no". They also might see a bogus email and cautiously open it or delete it outright.

    It's called education. And the author seems to acknowledge that no one is doing anything to educate kids who eventually become adults not to do stupid shit and click every link in an email or plug in random USB drives. So we might as well try and mold secure computing around such a careless society. It's certainly not the right way to do things but what can you do on the face of such apathy?

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