> Small, less complex protocols are inherently less likely to be insecure all things being equal, simply due to reduced attack surface.

That feels intuitive in the "less code is less bugs is less security issues" sense but implies that "secure" and "can't be abused" are the same thing.

Related? Sure. Same? No.

Oddly enough, we probably could have prevented the replay/amplification dos attacks that use DNS by making DNS more complex / adding mutual authentication so it's not possible for A to request something that is then sent to B.