A case against security nihilism

Matthew Green · 20 Jul 2021

Read the piece on blog.cryptographyengineering.com ↗

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Our reading
Shrugging that perfect security is impossible is the wrong lesson: the achievable goal is to wreck the economics of mass exploitation.

Their wordsThe problem that companies like Apple need to solve is not preventing exploits forever, but a much simpler one: they need to screw up the economics of NSO-style mass exploitation.
Our reading
What made NSO different was not its exploits but its scale: it turned state-grade surveillance into something any government could buy.

Their wordsRather: NSO’s genius is that they’ve done something that attackers were never incentivized to do in this past: democratize access to exploit technology.

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