Not sure I follow the analogy, so apologies if I'm reading it backwards, but we do in fact have standards for "good enough" brakes without being brake-maxxers.

Similarly here, I'd argue that a verified implementation with correctness proofs, mechanical translation, and easily auditable theorems seems close to good enough? A lot rides on the Claude-built translator, I suppose, but the trusted code for that project seems to be tiny in comparison to what it would have been 2 years ago!

I don't get the analogy. Brakes that are good enough for a Honda Civic driven at regular speeds are not good enough for a fire truck or a race car, but there are in fact standards that are "good enough" for all of those.

All security is a negotiation of allocating resources. It always ends with “well, that’s good enough for this.” There is never a “Ahhhh we’re done!” It can always be “more secure”.

There is an area where an AI audit can add some real value: the huge multitude companies that have never looked at security at all. Small businesses.

This is why we all use ceramics in our daily-drivers, of course.

Haha, we are ahead of you. We realised we were gonna get owned a long time ago, since business and engineering teams prioritised speed over security. And also that it is genuinely hard to secure everything.

This is why there are so many resilience initiatives in serious organisations. Assume it is gonna happen. Limit blast radius, ensure effective recovery.

FHE would be nice, but there's a lot of products that could be E2EE today. Plenty of breaches are just server-side files and dumps, there's no excuse for not using E2EE cloud storage.

Databases are much more tricky, but if we're talking a significant shift, it is as good a plan as any. Clearly server trust is not working.

AI is accelerating both sides for defenders and attackers, but mobile clients are already way ahead of typical desktop. Android's desktop mode exists in the OS now but needs a lot of work and more powerful chips before it can replace desktops.

For security against remote attacks, I'd rank clients roughly: GrapheneOS, iOS/iPadOS, stock Android on Pixels, ChromeOS, macOS, Windows, desktop Linux. Prefer more secure clients, always, but now the client is all that's left to trust for content.

Native clients avoid the web E2EE problem and are easier than ever to build. With AI, you can audit the source as often as you want and reproducible builds mean you know that's what you're running.

... How does that change, from the security advice of 2008?

Pwn2Own was demonstrating no stack as secure back then, too. People were told defense in depth, recovery methods, rapid spin up and lockdown, for the last few decades.

I'd argue that the difference is often just semantics. In general, I can do a better job on a given task in a week than a day. If I only have a day, but AI lets me do in that day what would have otherwise taken a week, then the result is better while my time expenditure remains constant.