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Comment by VulgarExigency | Hacker News Reader

The CIA ran one of the world's largest cryptography companies, for DECADES[1]. Are you truly so naive that you believe intelligence agencies that have more to gain from stifling the discovery of vulnerabilities they know of and use wouldn't do so?

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/world/national-...

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You should probably realise that the world has radically changed since then. This kind of thing works when you have a significant lead in the field that makes keeping vulnerabilities open sufficiently low risk for your own side. But if your adversaries have similar capabilities, then the calculation changes.

Has anything changed? Governments are hoarding undisclosed vulnerabilities, using them as they see fit instead of fixing. Every espionage, surveillance, or war campaign (see Russia v Ukraine, US/Israel v Iran etc) is followed by a ton of burned 0-days.

>This kind of thing works when you have a significant lead in the field

No? It works even if the adversary has the same capabilities. It only stops working when everything is fixed.

I believe it is unlikely. (Not because I do not believe NSA is hoarding 0-days, but for many other reasons.)

I'm curious: to any professional vulnerability researchers reading this, what do you think?

I used to call everything a conspiracy theory, but then Glenn Greenwald published "No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA and the Surveillance State".

Now i know that reality is worse than the worst conspiracy theorist.

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