Unsafe at any bitrate?
[This a guest post by Cigital’s Troy Jones, written in reference to episode 25 of The Silver Bullet Security Podcast, an interview with Jon Swartz.]
Gary,
Listening to your podcast with Jon Swartz today, you briefly mentioned Ralph Nader a couple of times. You said almost in jest, that “… we need a Ralph Nader for Security.” This got me thinking about a recent brownbag you gave on Software Security, where you mentioned that clients have implied needs for security but may not explicitly state their needs. I think the concept of implied need for software security and what Nader did to impact auto safety are entirely related.
Back in the 60’s people expected that the cars they bought were “safe”. Safety was not a marketing angle used by the car companies, and people did not shop around for the safest cars, but no one would buy an “unsafe” car. They just trusted and expected that the big auto makers had already thought about safety and “built it in” because no reputable car manufacturer would sell an “unsafe” car, would they?
It was not until Ralph Nader wrote “Unsafe at any Speed” that people began to question the safety of the cars they bought. When it became apparent that Detroit was selling them unsafe cars, the public outcry (not the book itself) prompted congress to act to enable novel new safety standards like seatbelts, bumpers that actually worked, and eventually crumple zones and air bags. So, people had an implied need for auto safety, but did not express that need until they became educated to the fact that they were not safe. Then they expressed their newfound need for safety to the politicians and also voted with their pocket books, buying safer cars. When consumers were provided with valid safety evaluations, from Consumer Reports and the National Highway Traffic Safety Commission, they changed their buying habits. Auto manufacturers (eventually) changed their approach in response. After years of fighting increasingly stringent safety regulations, they now compete to be able to advertise that their minivan has the highest safety rating.
So, what does all this have to do with software security? One point is that “safe” is relative term. You are safe if you feel safe. It is hard or impossible to know if you are actually safe but it is easy to have your illusion of safety shattered by hard facts. Your average consumer today may be oblivious or vaguely concerned about software security, but they don’t have the information necessary to make discriminating choices about what software to use or buy and to stay away from. There is no Internet Highway Safety Commission and no ratings to refer to. Without this information, people are unable to express their implicit needs. They are driving metaphorical Corvairs and they don’t even know it.
Another point is that safety and security are both relative. The worst Yugoslavian POS manufactured today is probably much safer than any car rolling off the Detroit auto lines in 1965. It is conceivable that 50 years from now people will look back and wonder how we survived without collision avoiding auto-pilots in our cars! People’s expectations for “safety” evolve over time and hopefully their actual safety improves as cars are better engineered, but there is no endpoint- no “safety finish line”. I think this analogy applies to “Software Security”. Software should get more secure over time if security is considered an important goal, but software will never be 100% secure. Good for job security but bad for everyone who depends on software to work securely.
A third point is that the initial reaction to unsafe autos was to build safer highways. Wide-open, straight, and fast highways seemed to be more cost effective than engineering better automobiles. It was not until highway traffic deaths began to skyrocket that everyone realized how effective automobiles are at killing the occupants involved in an accident at 75 MPH with no seat belts. The same approach has been taken on the internet. Bigger pipes and better firewalls should take care of the problem. No need to design and build more secure software! But the common folk will eventually realize that building a super information highway to their most confidential data has lots of unintended negative consequences, especially when it is so easy for the crooks to get past the vigilant but not-too-bright night watchman.
The last point I would make is that it took a fairly long time and a number of contributing factors for something to be done about auto safety. While Nader’s book was certainly a catalyst, it was not the “Auto Safety Pearl Harbor”. He merely recognized and assembled the information in a concise format that allowed people to understand and take action against a problem that had been growing worse for a long time. My guess is that the same will be true for software security. There will not be a “Software Security Pearl Harbor”. But through your continued evangelizing, through books like Jon Swartz’s “Zero Day Threat” and by their own negative experiences, people will eventually realize that something has to change and will demand action from software vendors, perhaps increased regulation from Congress, and maybe even a rating system to identify the worst offenders and the most secure software available so that they can make better choices. I am convinced that attitudes will begin to change soon, as the current rate of increase in cyber-crime has us on a trajectory to reach 1% of total GDP with 4 years. If that happens, it will definitely get the attention of quite a few people and may drive the expression of latent needs for software security.
