Security News > 2022 > August > Security and Cheap Complexity

For most of human history, a more complex device was more expensive to build than a simpler device.

It is often more cost-effective to take a very complicated device, and make it simulate simplicity, than to make a simpler device.

On the other hand, custom-designed, simpler, application-specific devices, which could in principle be much more secure, are very expensive.

ARM Cortex-M0 CPUs cost pennies, though they are more powerful than some supercomputers of the 20th century.

A general-purpose operating system is free, but a simpler, custom-designed, perhaps more secure OS would be very expensive to build.

Today, it's easier to build complex systems than it is to build simple ones.

News URL

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2022/08/security-and-cheap-complexity.html