[Discuss] Port Scanning

[richard.pieri at gmail.com (Rich Pieri)]

On Sat, 3 Aug 2024 22:05:49 -0400
Bill Bogstad <bogstad at pobox.com> wrote:

> I think it is basically because the industry has convinced itself
> that bugs are inevitable and there is no way to mitigate those bugs
> becoming security problems.   Back in the 90s, I found security
> fascinating; but when I realized that nobody had any interest in
> actually doing anything more than dealing with this week's problem, I
> decided that wasn't a career path I wanted to follow.

It's not that nobody has that interest. It's that perfect security is
impossible either in the physical world or the digital realm: the
attacker always has the advantage over the defender. We do what we can
think of to prevent compromise but we understand that the attackers can
try all of the things we *didn't* think of or the tiniest of mistakes
we make. So we also do what we can to detect, contain and mitigate
compromise. It's very much whack-a-mole, solving the endless string of
this week's problem.

Sometimes it takes a catastrophe like the Titanic disaster or the XZ
tools disaster to get problems addressed. What is most important is
that we learn from the mistakes that lead to these disasters, and build
on top of that knowledge.

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