Facebook calls for a more people-centric security industr
The security industry needs to worry less about technology and more about people, said Facebook's security boss.
Alex Stamos scolded the security industry in the opening keynote of the 2017 Black Hat conference.
He said there was too much focus on technically complex "stunt" hacks and not enough on finding ways to help the mass of people stay safe.
The problem would only worsen if the industry did not become more diverse and exhibit more empathy, he said.
No spies
"We have perfected the art of finding problems without fixing real world issues," he told attendees. "We focus too much on complexity, not harm."
He cited examples of technically brilliant presentations at the show, such as insulin pumps being hacked, that had little relation to real issues experienced by people who use technology rather than work with it or understand it well.
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Also, he said, the security industry concentrated too much on the small number of complex hack attacks aimed at large corporations that were mounted by the most sophisticated adversaries.
By contrast, he said, most Facebook users who lost data were not being targeted by spies or nation-states.
"The things that we see, that we come across every day, that cause people to lose control of their information are not that advanced," he said. "Adversaries will do the simplest thing they need to do to make an attack work."
BLACK HAT
The lack of focus on those more mundane problems came about because often security experts had little interest in or empathy for people, he said. This attitude was exemplified by the thought he often heard security pros express that there would be fewer breaches and less data lost if people were perfect, he added.
