Losing ‘this’ internet is at risk of losing an ‘engine of beauty’, and the problem is there is no mandate to do it right.
Delivering the opening keynote at Black Hat USA in Las Vegas, security researcher and chief scientist of White Ops Dan Kaminsky highlighted the challenges of what he called ‘this’ internet is facing, and why the likes of Minitel, AOL and AT&T (a company which he said is the equivalent of a kid putting on their Dad’s coat) had failed to deliver a lasting solution.
He said: “We have work to do to get the internet fixed as we risk losing the engine of beauty, so here’s what I want – if you know a policy person, I know a few as they are doing extraordinary work - we need institutions and systems and an NIH for cyber.
“For engineers, possible is not enough to have solutions in security, and it is possible that if the stars align you won’t get hacked for a few hours, that is not enough. For managers, we do not compete on security, and the most effective way is out there. For everyone else, there is a lot of people out there: co-workers, governments, but they notice what is wrong and do something about it.”
Kaminsky also pointed to the Internet of Things (IoT) as being the first technology that people assume to be insecure right out of the gate, and he said he worries about the ability to innovate and not knowing what to teach people.
He concluded by saying that if we want security to make life better for everyone else, we should give people environments that are better to work with. “Think of the lives we are impacting and time to scale, this is the game we play [while] we have this internet to hold on to. Figure out what people want to do and help them.”