Another winner (winnah winnah chicken dinnah) over at the Register talking about how the Internet is fundamentally flawed and how all the new browser security features really won’t help. The article was titled “Web browsers face crisis of security confidence”.
OH NO! My Response:
Dan,
Your discussion regarding ARPA’s lack of focus on security when developing what later became “the Internet” shows a fundamental lack of research, knowledge, or depth in this topic, on your part. It is clear that you have no business posting on the Register; although I have noticed lately that it has become more and more “shock” oriented in its approach to reporting the news, and can be likened to blog more than a legitimate news outlet of any kind… so I guess this is just part of the whole cheapening of the Register and I shouldn’t complain (too much).
Additionally, I found it to be hypocritical for you to, on one-hand, blame the people who designed the system for not thinking that people like yourself would want to use it to make money, and then on the other-hand, to blame vendors for not fixing the fundamental issues discovered after ARPA handed it off (or was forced to) to the NSF. So… you sit there and whine about the design being “highly flawed” and say that the IETF’s RFC system is “arcane”… but then you blame vendors like Microsoft, Cisco, and others, for not fixing the issues??? So, no one is good enough for you? Let’s just pull the plug on the whole thing, shall we?
Do a little more research before you go blasting what you think is fact. The bottom-line is… the net is just a transport at the end of the day. That’s what the whole ARPA program was about… survivable packet-switched networks. While DNS and some of the other infrastructure applications were built during a time when the number of systems attached were relatively low and you could make “across the board” changes to the infrastructure during “flag-days”, those days are long-gone and you need to be able to recognize that, while there are flaws, these systems, given their original intent and age, serve us far better than we deserve.
The applications that ride across this transport came later, and most of what you’re complaining about regarding drive-by attacks, dangerous ActiveX and Javascript, and other “features” of Web 2.0, were developed by the same folks who are making most of the money out there today… so obviously they’re not concerned because it’s their customers getting ripped-off… not them. Stealing money isn’t new… and frankly the issues surrounding the problem have more to do with the fact that most people just have absolutely no business whatsoever owning and/or operating a computer than they do with any flaws in systems.
You don’t leave your money on your doorstep when you walk in the house each night, but you’re willing to expose your entire financial profile and the keys to all your accounts to a network capable of exposing it to millions of people in the blink of an eye??? Where’s the logic in that? Just because I discovered that I could use a bread n’ butter knife as a screwdriver in a pinch doesn’t mean I threw away all my screwdrivers… likewise, I didn’t stop going to the bank when I needed money just because I could “buy things online”.
Yeah, I done it again…
