Hacker News Reader

Comment by grifball | Hacker News Reader

Seems that a lot of these attacks (except for this one) are just simple social engineering: an employee is phished to get into the company VPN, and from there, it's maybe a couple more simple exploits on systems that were never meant to be exposed and then it's over. You can compartmentalize employees but it's harder to do than compartmentalizing software I think.

View on HN

I think that's part of what security people mean by "zero-trust security".

Instead of building a giant moat and assuming that everyone who got past the moat is trusted, assume that everyone is untrusted by default, and build a capability system that's expressive enough that you can give everyone just enough capabilities that they can do their job without going through a bunch of pointless checks.

In practice that model is impopular because corporations tend to screw up the later part.

Yeah, honestly, I hate the truth that this compartment-based system is the best method for security. I never have the access to do my job, and it's a constant frustration to get access. Also, it makes for really uninteresting problems to solve. Instead of using something interesting to secure our systems, like cryptography, the most effective method is just phishing tests, employee training, and web form fuzzing. Cryptographic innovation is part of the solution, but at a certain business level, it's just about training.

This 1000%

WE are the weakest link! The most technically secure system would be nearly unusable by humans without enormous inconvenience. So long as software systems are built by humans, for humans, they will always be vulnerable at the interface.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com