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consumer451 • today at 1:46 AM • 3 replies • view on HN

In one of Sean Carroll's AMA's, he once said something along the lines of "entropy favors the attacker over the defender."

That really stuck with me. My internal thought was "it's easier to kick over a sand castle than to build one." It seems to ring true for infosec, societal structures, and kinetic cases. Is this just a base truth?


Replies

xtajv • today at 3:23 AM

I think it bears mentioning that like sand castles, software engineering has approximately zero building codes.

Try kicking over a building sometime. (Or don't - you'll stub your toe).

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jacquesm • today at 1:50 AM

Yes, I've worded this as 'the asymmetry between creation and destruction'. Any idiot can destroy a piece of glass, it takes a whole raft of experts to make a pane and then some more to properly mount it.

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pinevale • today at 3:25 AM

> In one of Sean Carroll's AMA's, he once said something along the lines of "entropy favors the attacker over the defender."

Eh, kinda. The defenders have the advantage of playing on the home turf. They know their infrastructure, can have sensors and traps everywhere. The bad guys are stumbling in the dark. They have no idea what's real and what's a honeypot, what signals you're watching, etc.

The problem is that almost no one takes this advantage seriously. If you're not paying attention to your infra, yeah, you're gonna get owned.

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