what's mine is yours

man-in-the-middle

I am sure that we all have secrets and are interested in keeping them private. No matter where we fall on the spectrum of internet privacy most of us wish some things to remain private. Unfortunately that is a difficult problem. Based on the 1988 DARPA Internet Protocols design, the Internet was not built for security. Born out of open-source solutions, the Internet we know today suffers from an architecture that simply cannot protect its users from unwarranted and embarrassingly easy attacks. Professor Paul Strassman of GMU said:

There are tens of thousands of defenders of the Internet infrastructure who must be vigilant around the clock, everywhere. Meanwhile, small teams of attackers can strike undetected whenever they choose, from wherever they may be in the world. This is why the contests between the defenders and the aggressors meet the definition of asymmetric warfare in its extreme form.

This kind of war is unsustainable. Despite the constant effort to protect ourselves, we will continue to see holes like Heartbleed and Shellshock unless we make some fundamental and very difficult changes.

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