Hacker News Reader

Heartbleed was the first one to do that: they gave it a suitably scary name, dedicated website, and logo. The result is that the media went wild over it, and people have been trying to replicate that reaction ever since.

View on HN

And they didn't go wild over the next one because as far as anyone not involved in the technical end, nothing happened. It looked like everyone cried wolf.

Generating hype by marketing issues doesn't work.

If it got people to update, then it worked.

Except that there's some analogue of 'outrage fatigue' ('security fatigue'?). If the publicity is too successful in averting the problem, then there's a danger that, rather than correctly deducing "the loud publicity worked", some will deduce "the loud publicity is unnecessary"—and so future warnings will be ignored under the impression that they are 'crying wolf'.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com