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Comment by Veserv

15 hours ago

That is actually unfair. Most companys spend enormous amounts on security with vast armys of security employees. Not that it is effective, but it is not for lack of resources or trying.

I mean we are literally in a thread about how the 4 trillion dollar company, literally the 3rd most valuable company in the world, with a core competency in software has, yet again, released a core product riddled with security defects for the 50th year in a row.

Commercial IT security is a industry that is incapable to a fault and has, so far, faced basically zero consequences for it.

For every Apple, there are 100 mom-and-pop companies who have nothing.

Even more so in the future when a software company can be launched by a farm of AI Agents with a founder at helm with no clue about computing or security.

What's debateable is how many of those companies actually need irontight security, because they are never realistically going to be targets of criminals and/or they have nothing valuable to steal/corrupt in the first place (other than the owner's pride).

  • I am absolutely baffled by your response.

    I was pointing out how even Apple, a entity who by all rights should have top-notch security, is still absolutely hopeless in the face of commonplace commercial, profit-motivated attackers.

    Massive, extremely well-resourced divisions supported by management in a technically competent organization that is actually trying to solve the problem struggle to produce at best middling security that is inadequate against commonplace threats. This is not a prioritization problem; even if you do “everything right” you are still vulnerable to run-of-the-mill commercial attackers. This is a fundamental capability problem, like how we can not make a net positive fusion reactor right now.

    It is actually unfair to blame these companies for not having a fusion reactor because they “were not trying hard enough”. Actual security is not a easy problem, and it is a great disservice to portray it as one that is only unsolved due to dunderheads being in charge since it leads to underestimating what actually needs to be done.

    That is not to say that you can not do dramatically worse than the “gold standard” and also that most organizations are actually incompetent; but the “gold standard” is still objectively grossly inadequate. You need to be dramatically better than the 4 trillion dollar software company to reach adequate against prevailing threats.

  • They have a website that can be used to host malware and/or seo link farms.

    I still have nightmares about the contact form on my low-stakes personal website getting hijacked to use as a spam sender (because I used unsanitized input in mail headers).

Hey now, when Apple products get a serious Kernel level vulnerability that is able to be executed just by browsing a website. It's a "jailbreak" not an "exploit".

Exploits are BAD!

> Most companys spend enormous amounts on security with vast armys of security employees

This is true in America in many industries now, but most of the rest of the world (even the rest of the OECD) is still far behind.