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Zubon comments on Open Thread, Jul. 20 - Jul. 26, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion

4 Post author: MrMind 20 July 2015 06:55AM

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Comment author: Zubon 23 July 2015 09:22:27PM 6 points [-]

Additional note to #3: humans are often the weakest part of your security. If I want to get into a system, all I need to do is convince someone to give me a password, share their access, etc. That also means your system is not only as insecure as your most insecure piece of hardware/software but also as your most insecure user (with relevant privileges). One person who can be convinced that I am from their IT department, and I am in.

Additional note to #4: but if I am willing to forego those benefits in favor of the ones I just mentioned, the human element of security becomes even weaker. If I am holding food in my hands and walking towards the door around start time, someone will hold the door for me. Great, I am in. Drop it off, look like I belong for a minute, find a cubicle with passwords on a sticky note. 5 minutes and I now have logins.

The stronger your technological security, the weaker the human element tends to become. Tell people to use a 12-character pseudorandom password with an upper case, a lower case, a number, and a special character, never re-use, change every 90 days, and use a different password for every system? No one remembers that, and your chance of the password stickynote rises towards 100%.

Assume all the technological problems were solved, and you still have insecure systems go long as anyone can use them.