Re: A modest proposal

[valdis.kletnieks () vt edu]

On Fri, 20 Jul 2012 04:01:39 +0200, Bzzz said:

> In this matter, everybody's here knows that threatening these
> corpos of a full disclosure is the only way to go, because 
> they're like kids that won't grow up and seek the least effort 
> possible & max benefit way - in a word, they're irresponsible.

Actually, at least in the US, the corporations are in fact acting *very*
responsibly.  Legally, their obligation is *not* to their clients and
customers, but to their shareholders.    In fact, "spend as little money and
resources as possible on security without adversely affecting the stock price"
is what they're pretty much obligated to do.  Now go back and look at how big a
hit the TJX, Heartland, and Sony PSN pwnages hurt the company's stock prices.

Currently, damage and losses sustained by clients and customers aren't usually
reflected back to the corporation - you can't sue Microsoft because you got
pwned through an IE bug (thanks to the EULA you agreed to).  So said costs are
(to Microsoft) "Somebody Else's Problem", or what economists call an
"externality".  And as long as a corporation can treat those costs as
externalities, things aren't going to change much.  The only reason that any
sort of full or responsible disclosure works is that the corporation sees bad
PR as something it can't treat as an externality (and if the corp sees itself
as bulletproof against bad PR, it has no reason to cooperate with a full or
responsible disclosure).

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