<
https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/18/descartes-delenda-est/#self-destruct-sequence-initiated>
"As a science fiction writer, I am professionally irritated by a lot of sf
movies. Not only do those writers get paid a
lot more than I do, they insist
on including things like "self-destruct" buttons on the bridges of their
starships.
Look, I get it. When the evil empire is closing in on your flagship with its
secret transdimensional technology, it's important that you keep those secrets
out of the emperor's hand. An irrevocable self-destruct switch there on the
bridge gets the job done! (It has to be irrevocable, otherwise the baddies'll
just swarm the bridge and toggle it off).
But c'
mon. If there's a facility built into your spaceship that causes it to
explode no matter what the people on the bridge do, that is
also a pretty big
security risk! What if the bad guy figures out how to hijack the measure that –
by design – the people who depend on the spaceship as a matter of life and
death can't detect or override?
I mean, sure, you can try to simplify that self-destruct system to make it
easier to audit and assure yourself that it doesn't have any bugs in it, but
remember Schneier's Law: anyone can design a security system that works so well
that they themselves can't think of a flaw in it. That doesn't mean you've made
a security system that works – only that you've made a security system that
works on people stupider than
you.
I know it's weird to be worried about realism in movies that pretend we will
ever find a practical means to visit other star systems and shuttle back and
forth between them (which we are very, very unlikely to do):
https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/09/astrobezzle/#send-robots-instead
But this kind of foolishness galls me. It galls me even more when it happens in
the
real world of technology design, which is why I've spent the past
quarter-century being
very cross about Digital Rights Management in general,
and trusted computing in particular."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
